This Spiral Dance
by Sky Samuelle
Summary: Voldemort chooses Neville, James & Lily live, but Severus Snape still finds himself on a quest for absolution. In the meantime, Regulus learns how living with your choices can be more difficult than dying for them. SSLE
1. Chapter 1

**THIS SPIRAL DANCE**

Author: Sky Samuelle

Summary: Voldemort chooses Neville, James & Lily live, but Severus Snape still finds himself on a quest for absolution. 

_**PROLOGUE**_

_October 31, 1981_

"Lily, take Harry and run! I'll hold them off…."

The door blasted open and Bellatrix Lestrange's ferocious, cackling laughter roared above the explosions. "Will you do it, Potter?"

Lily felt cold shivers running along her spine as she frantically reached Harry's cradle. Her wand was hidden under her robe, but she knew drawing it out would not be of any use when they were so clearly outnumbered. Peter had betrayed them…out of all the Death Eaters their Secret Keeper could have led to their sanctuary in Godric's Hollow, the Lestranges were the worst ones. They represented a horrid combination of bloodlust, experience, and skill.

Yet she and James could have had a chance to survive this ambush if only Avery and Nott had not accompanied them.

Clutching the infant to her chest, Lily swore she would lay down her life if it meant saving her son. Maybe if she offered her life as fee and the Death Eaters refused her, if she worded her plea the right way, blood magic would keep Harry alive and safe. A blood oath…it was her only hope. But would it work?

A savage scream interrupted the erratic flow of her thoughts. It was Bellatrix.

"You'll pay for this!"

Hushing her crying child, the red-haired witch felt an overpowering wave of regret; if only she had been able to Apparate Harry somewhere safe….

She could not know James had just killed Rodolphus Lestrange, embittering his consort's hunger for revenge.

In few moments her prayers would fall on deaf ears, and then Lily Potter would be lying on the ground, Stunned by an eager-looking Bellatrix while her husband James screamed her name, panic slowing his reflexes in his duel with Nott.

In a few moments, nobody would be able to stop Bella's fury from crushing Harry James Potter, Crucio after Crucio.

When Lily came back to consciousness in the stiff embrace of a shivering Sirius Black, she hardly noticed the other woman's corpse stretched out before her. The first sight that met her eyes was that of James, immobile and horrified, staring at something little and weird convulsing on the floor.

Its movements were so little like a human's that it took Lily a while to recognize that it was a boy – her little boy.

" Harry ? "

_Two years later _

"I can't believe you're really leaving," Lily Potter said in a steady, flat voice, although she felt as if, inside her, everything was about to shatter. Her green, clouded eyes skipped from her husband's trunk on the floor to his face, searching for signs of hesitance where there were none.

To be honest, she didn't know why their absence hurt her so. Last year, when James and Sirius had been so involved in tracking the Death Eaters who ran abroad after You-Know-Who's fall, James had been absent so long and so often that the distance between them when he came back home was impossible to ignore. Yet the finality of his departure now scared her; it denied her the hope that things might someday be okay again.

"I don't see you trying to stop me, Lils." His voice was weary, like his gaze. It felt wrong, somehow, after all the nights they'd spent up arguing lately, but she couldn't deny he was right. Even before, Lily had never asked him to stay home. Her mind was always on Harry, and after what Peter's betrayal had exacted from them it was too difficult to entrust her son to _anybody_ else. Even leaving Harry alone with his father or godfather for more than a few minutes used to stifle her with anxiety…and before she realized how it had happened, James was there and she was frustrated as hell because he didn't know how to be a father to a special child like Harry. Somewhere in her mind, she wondered if she had never given him the chance to learn.

Was it her fault? All of it? A little bit?

Lily shook her head vehemently, gritting her teeth when James spoke again.

"I'll be always here for Harry."

"Oh, really? Those are tough words for someone whose idea of parental care until two days ago was locking him up in Saint Mungo's. "

Perhaps sarcasm wasn't useful, but it made her feel a lot better. Even while it hurt her, it hurt both of them; and maybe it gratified her only because it gave her the sensation of putting her and James on the same page about something once again.

"I've only suggested we might not to be able to give him the kind of care he needs. He is my son and I love him, but we can't stop living because he's –" James' mouth opened and closed for few seconds as if he had extreme difficulty saying "disturbed".

Lily kept her eyes tight shut and willed herself to slow her breathing until she calmed down. It wouldn't do at all to revisit the same argument again and again until they were senile. James was Harry's dad, no matter how much difficulty he had playing the role to a imperfect son.

_An _insane_ son_, a cruel voice whispered painfully from the darker depths of her mind. But she could not abandon Harry just because parenting him was harder than she had anticipated it would be. If his_ mother_ gave up on him, who else would fight for his recovery?

"I understand what you feel, James, but Harry – the kid who's upstairs right now, completely catatonic, as his dad leaves – is my life. I will see him through this, even if I must wait a lifetime to have him recognize me even a little."

"Then you're braver than I am. I wish…."

Lily never knew if the loathing embedded in that single admission was directed more toward himself or her.

**---**

Dark magic can change you; this was a lesson Severus Snape had to learn the hard way. It was something his mother used to repeat often to him when he was a child, but it had not diminished his interest in the Dark Arts. If anything, this concept had increased his fascination with those mysteries which held the power to completely pervert one's nature as much they had the potential to lead the way to greatness.

"_Remember, Severus: the wizard becomes the magic he practices, because your magic is naught but your heart's reflection. Every act of destruction must be compensated by an act of creation, otherwise those basic, natural impulses which are the root and the backbone of Dark spells – anger, regret, sadness, and pain – will fester until you know nothing else. Don't _ever_ forget. "_

Severus had never forgot Eileen's teachings; years afterward, when Albus Dumbledore refused to expel Potter and his clique for almost driving Severus to his death, it was as if a dam inside him had broken and he wanted nothing more than to allow the flow to drive him away, to somewhere above human weaknesses and failures. Without the soothing presence of his only friend, it had been an easy choice to let the darkness reach his very core, hoping he would become another, stronger man.

Lost among the shadows of his heart, eventually he welcomed with relief the realization that something deep and vital in him had gone silent and cold.

It wasn't until the Prophecy that he began to glimpse how far his loss of control had extended and what kind of man he had willed himself to become. Only when he had discovered that his hatred was about taking his only love from him had Severus felt the stirrings of a vague, undefined regret. He had compromised himself with two Masters to keep her safe, and _Lily Potter, _whose name he still found it difficult to articulate even in the secret well of his mindhad lived.

The Dark Lord had chosen to visit the Longbottom family, sending the Lestranges to finish off Harry Potter. Dumbledore wouldn't need the Potters now that Neville Longbottom had been marked. Lily would be safe…yet….

Her son had been tortured into insanity because of information _he_ had delivered. Finally Severus Snape had the complete, utter certainty of having damaged James Potter far more than the other man had damaged him. It should have been a cause for celebration, knowing that no miniature replica of that arrogant, undeserving moron would walk the halls of Hogwarts any time soon. Severus should have felt _triumphant _because he had caused James a defeat from which he would never be able to walk away. In spite of Lily's suffering (which he could not have prevented anyway), he should have rejoiced.

But his victory was short-lived. Gods, it seemed as if James Potter had won even when he lost, and Severus could only hate him more for it. Because when Snape's gaze had fallen on the only photo the _Daily Prophet_ had ever managed to publish on the matter (a leak inside Saint Mungo's, it was said, easily discovered after the article went out) he took hardly any notice of the trademark disgracefully pleasant Potter features on that puffy, childish face. All he had seen were _those eyes, _so vacant yet so similar to Lily's, eyes that had seen him happy so along ago.

For some reason, he could not put them out of his mind. So Severus had called it an academic challenge and he began researching and working on formulations. Certainly, once he got to the bottom of this problem, those green eyes would cease to follow him from sleep into waking.

Two years later, Severus Snape was still teaching at Hogwarts, although it was a living he loathed. He would not have been able to say what truly kept him here, whether it was a doubt that employment of the same prestige would have been accessible to him after his trial as a Death Deater, the awaiting of the probable (if not certain) return of the Dark Lord, of the unexplored concept that he might have been more vulnerable to falling back into his addiction to Darkness away from the Castle and its constant reminders of his mistakes.

He knew Dumbledore had plans for The Boy Who Lived, but Snape wasn't certain how far those plans involved him. He had continued with energy and constant dedication his search for the potion that would draw Potter Jr. back from his pathetic state to unleash his unparalleled genetic flaws on the unsuspecting world. It was the only thing he could still do for Lily.

Even with Potter and Black in Albania for some time now, Severus knew better than to ask her for something he could not have; her attempts to bridge the distance between them after the trials were met with the cool sarcasm he was capable of. Any friendship Lily Potter had offered to him wouldn't have lasted beyond her discovery of what he had caused to happen. There was no doubt in his mind that she would find the truth, if he allowed her back in his life. Regardless of how his dealings with the Headmaster had begun, Snape felt his future was bound to the old coot's barely mentioned projects.


	2. Chapter1: Reasons

**Chapter 1: Reasons **

"Severus, if you have a moment, could we discuss the treatment you'll be starting on Harry Potter?"

Severus Snape, current Potions Master and Professor at Hogwarts, made a calculated and particularly intense effort to keep his gaze running along the lines on the parchments he was grading. "I would ask what you're talking about, Headmaster, but then it would become painfully obvious that we both know I'm not planning anything of the sort."

"Oh, but this is exactly what I meant, my dear boy!" the old, silver-bearded man replied with a casual, silly merriness that didn't fool the younger man for a moment. "It can't have escaped your notice how long it's been since Hogwarts was mentioned in journals of magical research as a facility of independent study."

Sighing, Severus resignedly raised his gaze to meet the Headmaster's twinkling cerulean orbs. Entwining his fingers above the essays, he leaned back in his seat and feigned an air of unconcerned relaxation, while in fact he was anticipating that this discussion was about to take an excessively unpleasant direction. He hated few things more than being forced into acting against his better judgement, especially where a certain redhead was concerned, but Albus Dumbledore was developing a habit of disregarding that, especially where this matter, so frequently broached of late, was concerned.

"I believe," Severus drawled, "Filius Flitwick published an article on the greater success of human Transfiguration with youths less than four months ago."

Too bad it took more than that to faze the Headmaster.

"All more the reason, isn't it? I've just realized how dreadfully lazy it was of me disregard this school's tradition of encouraging experimentation with brews and potions. Unforgivable, one would say, when I have among my staff an accomplished Potions Master whose major subject of research is reparation of neurological damage."

"You didn't appear anywhere this eager to advertise my activities when we were testing the treatment on Regulus Black."

"Severus, I seem to recall this was almost a year ago. Mr Black would hardly have taken it well if he had seen his adventures displayed in the _Daily Prophet_."

The subtle undercurrent of reproach that flowed through his words grated on Severus' nerves like sandpaper on an open wound, yet the Slytherin wasn't one to let his irritation show. It would be humiliating (and self-damaging, in the long run), to let the scheming (if occasionally amusing) old coot know he could be agitated so easily.

Thus his voice was even calmer and silkier as he underlined his point. "Whereas Lily Potter would react so well if she were given false hope."

It was certainly the wrong thing to say, Severus understood when he saw those damned azure twinkles grow a little brighter. The mistake had been in referring to his childhood friend formally, using her full name and so indicating he was already on the defensive…pretending Dumbledore did not know that everything good Severus had done in his life had been for _he_r. Even if _she_ would never know.

"Poppy tells me Regulus Black is making excellent progress."

Severus inhaled deeply and, making a mental note to never again collaborate with a Hufflepuff in any of his future experimentation, regardless of how expert she might be in the healing arts, counted quickly from to three before announcing slowly, "Regulus Black had an entirely different problem: the left half of his body was physically and magically inept –"

"– as a result of brain damage," the other man interrupted with his usual placid, eerie tone, "resulting from a curse whose basic workings are not so different from the ones related to the Cruciatus, as you well know."

Tension made Snape's shoulders rigid and almost painfully heavy, but it was only that state of forced immobility that prevented him from feeling almost close to panicking.

"There's no proof the damage suffered by Harry Potter shares any similarities to the case of Regulus Black."

"Obviously," Dumbledore nodded, his slender fingers playing with tendrils with his long beard as if this was the most basic point of their argument. "Don't you see, Severus? You can test your theories on every patient in Saint Mungo's, but the only way you'll come close to understanding Harry's problem is by testing the treatment on the child himself and monitoring how he reacts to different treatments."

Somewhere deep within the recesses of his mind, Severus Snape knew this; but it didn't mean he appreciated the Headmaster's shoving the fact in his face. Quite the contrary.

To be reminded so artlessly of the transparency of his intentions in this regard felt so humiliating that he was growing incensed.

"Perhaps," he bit out, tasting the bitterness of it in his mouth, "you assume too much."

"Do I, Severus? I ask you because I can't imagine why you would miss the opportunity of a scholar's lifetime, other than an honorable fondness for an old friend and a understandable wish to not offend her or hurt yourselves with reminders of the past."

The empathy shining shamelessly through the other man's expression was something Severus would have given anything for when he was younger and the closest thing to innocent he had ever been, but at the present time it was simply another hateful reminder of his longing for the impossible. Forgiveness and trust weren't benefits he deserved or could afford to reach out for – and Severus Snape wasn't a man to ask for what he knew he wouldn't get.

"You see what you expect to see, Headmaster," he asserted with a firmness he didn't feel. "I merely think Harry Potter is not an ideal subject for any kind of experimentation, considering the difficulty I would have interpreting his subtler responses."

Something in Dumbledore's visage shifted to mirror that steadfast determination.

"Then you might find it difficult to explain to his mother your reasons for excluding him, since I've already written to her about our current activities and she expressed considerable interest in learning about them in geater detail."

"You – _what? _You had no right!" Severus sputtered, his control threatening to desert him.

The eyes which met his were no longer twinkling but somewhat steely, although it didn't alter the welcoming placidity of that wrinkled face. "I'm still the Headmaster here. I'd like to believe this gives me some right to decisions about the projects that take place within Hogwarts' walls."

However his mind raced for a reasoned reply to that, Severus couldn't come up with one. His hands were tied on this particular point; and even if they hadn't been, there was little chance of getting around Albus Dumbledore when he was hatching plots within plots, unless you were prepared. Dumbledore was that good, Severus had to admit in reluctant admiration.

Damn him for having sneaked Lily and the Potter spawn into his life without his noticing.

"Fine, then. Far be it from me to disregard your authority."

"I trust you will soon realize it was the right thing to do, Severus. You are too brilliant not to."

But Severus could only hide his raging thoughts behind the impenetrable, meticulously erected walls of his Occlumency.

_To hold a real conversation with Lily again…. _

Only under the recognized protection of those barricades built on the remembered, placating whispers of a familiar river and mental images of its frigid, invigorating waters could he admit how dangerous and yet tempting this new prospective was.

He could sense her subtle presence in his Occlumens shield: the waters were the living memory of the river by which they used to spend hours when they were children, the magnification of the only place where he had felt untouchable and strong.

Even after years, Lily was still everything to him…he had been a fool to think it would ever be any different.

_Dear Lily, _

_I'm exceedingly pleased to inform you that Hogwarts is conducting a research project on neurological damage derived from Dark Magic, which has obtained brilliant results from its therapy. With regard to those results, I can't ignore the difficulty your family is living through by neglecting to ask you if you'd like to have Harry included among the beneficiaries of our studies. _

_I know you will be able to very easily guess the man whose intellect hides behind this study, and I trust you more than anyone would recognize his capabilities. _

Lily stopped reading and folded the letter back up with the same meticulous care she already had at least forty-three times during the previous two days, in other words, since the Dumbledore missive had arrived, completely unannounced and unsettling. She had been carrying the letter around like a sort of talisman but, in spite of her immediate reply to Albus (of course she was interested in knowing more, she was so grateful he had thought of her, blah blah blah), she still had not taken any definite steps toward receiving further information.

The idea of going to the school, talking directly to Poppy and to _him_ made her nervous and reluctant for a whole series of contrasting reasons. Her protectiveness of her four-year-old son played a large role in holding her back, but it wasn't the only one or even the most important one.

There was the memory of all those endless visits and doctors, both Healers and Muggle psychiatrists, that she and James had faced almost a year after the fall of Voldemort (ah, how sour was the satisfaction she experienced in articulating the cursed name which had ruined her life!), when they had been forced to admit that Harry's inability to talk was sadly extending into an inability to interact with the outside world.

It had been terrible, searching and searching for any possible answer, without any idea of which direction to look in, seeing their faith build and then be dashed each time.

In a fairytale world, the tragedy would have made her marriage stronger, because she and James would have clung to each other and found there the resilience to go on. At first, maybe, it had been so…but then their demons had blinded them to everything else. Maybe they had been too young; maybe they had already lost too much with both of their own parents gone, Tuney who had became a hateful stranger, and Remus who never quite forgave Sirius and James for believing he was more susceptible than Peter to the Dark side's allure.

For a while, Lily was certain she and James had hated each other as much as they had loved each other, but Harry – their love for him, their shared guilt at not having protected him better, their anguish for his uncertain future – had held them together until the storm passed.

But the long silences following were hardly better. Lily focused on Harry ever more desperately, too blind to see how James, who had been raised to be surrounded by beautiful, unbroken things, was at a loss for how to approach a child whose mind was an opaque slate.

There had been sporadic occasions when Lily had wished intensely for her husband came back home even drunk or smelling like another woman. But James never gave her the reason she needed to be able to truly loathe him; he stood by her and Harry all the ways he knew or was capable of, but the blatant awareness that it wasn't ever enough tore apart both his pride and her compassion.

It would have been so much simpler if she had not understood, with all the clarity with which a wife eventually learns to see her husband. But she did see him: this young man born rich and handsome, spoilt son of two adoring parents who had a perfect child after they had already given up the dream of having one and promised to hang the moon for him; a boy who matured into a man too fast because of a war that had disrupted and upset everything.

Perhaps James didn't have enough energy left to change any more, or maybe it was she who was too tired to guide him, but understanding him made everything so much more painful because the truth was, Lily realized at some point, that falling for someone was much simpler than to just_…love_ someone, fully and beyond the rosy illusions of first love.

It was possible, if not probable, that she would never have fallen in love with James if she had really understood him; the thought hurt, as if she had fooled herself into seeing a fortress where there stood only a glass house.

Now she lived in Godric's Hollow with a child she would give anything for, although he exhausted her with his lifeless glances and empty giggles. She didn't know if she could tolerate further disillusionment, not with James and Sirius involved in some secretive quest for the Ministry in Albania.

James would probably have said no to Harry's participation in the study anyway; he didn't trust Severus Snape and he had been respectfully silent in his diffidence when she had tried approaching her old friend after his trial as Death Eater.

Remus would probably accompany her if she asked, but the werewolf was visiting an old aunt on the Caucasus and she would not write and ruin his vacation with her anxious concerns, especially knowing how aggravated he was by his recent difficulties in finding employment.

Deep in her heart she could not believe Severus would crush her hopes; she remembered well his genius, the Machiavellian inventiveness that had amazed her continuously in their shared youth. She could even gain some faith from his past experience with the Dark Arts, but she didn't understand him(why he would not write to her in person about this if he wanted her involved?) and this made her uncomfortable.

Lily knelt down, her fingers combing a tousled head of messy black hair. The child at her feet continued to gnaw on the ear of his stuffed bear, seemingly unaware of her caress.

"Oh, Harry," she sighed, unable to understand why she could never get used to this pain.

She turned his chin upward, unsure of what she wanted to say to her son or what drove her to hurt herself again and again. She realized now, looking into his wide, blank green eyes, that her desperate need to reach him wouldn't be silenced or suppressed by bland resignation. There was no choice, not really: she had to try, even if it meant leaving herself open to deeper scarring.

Living without hope was like dying by slow dehydration; if the price of her survival was facing Severus Snape again, she would pay it, even if it meant Lily Evans wasn't above coercion where her son was concerned.


	3. Chapter2 :A Reflection Of Yesterday

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**Chapter 2: A Reflection Of Yesterday **

Regulus Black entered the main Hogwarts Hospital ward, looking placidly around with an air of aristocratic boredom and frowning slightly as he discovered it to be completely empty.

A noise from his left made him turn aside and he finally saw Poppy Pomfrey exiting her office, barely pausing in mid-stride to acknowledge him with a nod and a concise salute, which he promptly returned.

Regulus was used to ignoring her formality – the woman had never quite forgiven him for a quite cruel prank he and few friends had pulled in his younger years on a Hufflepuff Muggleborn – but it was a surprise that Severus had allowed her to precede him. The man in question was of a maddening punctuality, inferior only to the meticulous care he reserved for his practices, be they spells or potions. Since last summer, when Regulus had been selected to begin the treatment, the other man had always underlined the centrality of his role by anticipating Poppy and following every action of hers with avid, if unobtrusive, interest.

During the whole of the previous summer, when Regulus had been basically coerced to stay at Hogwarts (absolute bed rest with this harpy as guardian, a mostly unpleasant experience), the other man had not missed one day of accurate monitoring…even now that Hogwarts was open to students and his "patient" was back at Grimmauld Palace, when Regulus came for his weekly check-up, Severus was always already here waiting for him.

So why was today different?

Eyeing Poppy with curiosity as she placed three vials and one jar on the worktable closest to the seat Regulus was presently occupying, he kept glancing around for any hint of anything misplaced and found nothing.

Eventually, he came back to watch the older, rounder woman while she carefully measured out his dosages, pouring the different potions into different small cups. He had learnt to recognize the vials by now; the thick orange concotion was vulgarly called "the gift of Anubis" because it influenced the mental state of patients, either sharpening or weakening the mind depending on the patient's general condition and the dosage. It was a compliment to Severus Snape's ability, both his capacity to brew the potion and the fact that he had just obtained the Ministry permission to attempt it, since it hovered on the border between Light and Dark Arts.

The ruby potion beside that was an experimental brew that suppressed chronic pain, midway between a Forgetfulness Potion and the Draught of Peace; it could easily cause addiction, as Regulus had experienced during the first months he had used it, and it required a careful test of the dosage because its effect varied in response to the user's metabolism.

The third potion, of a discouraging glowing yellow color, was a Gregory's Unctuous Unction, treated in some way Severus would not be complimented into revealing. As for the jar, it contained – Regulus had found out by covertly investigating the documents in Poppy's office during a very warm August night – a deceptively transparent ointment based on belladonna, aconite, valerian, and bubotuber pus. It gave him the shivers to imagine what effect their incautious combination would be able to induce in an unsuspecting subject.

As if she could sense the direction his thoughts were taking, the mediwitch paused in her movements for a moment to explain concisely, "Severus won't join us today. He asked me to tell you he will visit you on the weekend, but I _will_ monitor you today." It was obvious that his lack of trust in her ability rattled her and it explained her why her behaviour was so twitchy today, whereas she had tolerated him admirably well during the summer.

"What is keeping him, if I might ask?" Regulus ventured, maintaining a mask of unconcerned neutrality. He received a strangled snort as his answer.

"Detention with half of the second-year Hufflepuffs."

Regulus gave no outward sign of his thoughts while he drank his medicines and began unfastening the buttons of his robe. Severus hated teaching and it was a fact he rarely bothered disguising. Although his reasons were obscure to the other Slytherin, there were few doubts that, if such a route had been practicable, Severus would have enthusiastically applied his talent to a more profitable and gratifying way to sate his thirst for improving and researching spells and potions. His recent research project was the closest he would get to satisfying the passion he had fed on since their school days, and now…the man was shoving it aside, even if temporarily, in favor of tormenting Hufflepuffs?

Poppy interrupted the awkward silence between them while she massaged Regulus' spine with the ointment, a peculiar hesitation in her forceful hands more than in her tense voice. "He looked as if he had a remarkable amount of distress he needed to vent on his students."

Looking into her aged, imperious visage, Regulus detected a concern she wasn't bothering to hide from him. Why? It occurred to him the mediwitch could actually be convince…that he and Severus were friends?

Nodding emotionlessly, Regulus refrained from acting on a sudden, random impulse to rub his left arm. It was a nervous habit he was trying to keep under control. Perhaps, from an outsider's rosy perspective, the situation was exactly as it appeared; after all, Severus had contacted him personally to request his participation in his study – in itself rather strange, if one considered that Sirius had not violated his self-inflicted exile after the war. He and Regulus shared poor youthful choices and a closed temperament which had enabled them so far to avoid open conflicts with each other; also there was the fact that they had attended Hogwarts during the same period.

Her assumption, seemingly ridiculous, could be justified. But Poppy couldn't know what Regulus had done, whereas he was confronted with the evidence of his mistake every time he closed his eyes.

Those pitch-black eyes, so much like Severus', terrified and yet pleading even while the man's thin mouth uttered foul curses as a younger Regulus hesitantly raised his wand to him, the sounds of all the other Death Eaters jeering and inciting him to his first kill, his hold tightening around his wand as he resolved to shut out the grimace of horror on his future victim's face….

The way Regulus had _gloated, _giddy on the rush induced by Dark magic_. You never forget your first kill, Severus. There's nothing like an Avada Kedavra. __You should have heard that ugly Muggle muttering threats with his last breath._

The unmasked, unexplainable fury in his ex-housemate's expression as the older Death Eater bellowed, "He was mine! Mine to kill, mine to torture!"

It had all happened years ago, but if Regulus couldn't repress those unbearably sharp memories and stop them from cutting him into shreds in his gloomier moments, then he was certain there was no chance Severus could do the same. The first man he had killed...Snape Senior, the Potions Master's estranged father.

_You owe me this. _Severus had said to Regulus the first time he had demanded to be let into Grimmauld Palace, after he had smacked a thick envelope of parchments containing a detailed description of his studies in his face. They had not talked about it since then, but Slytherins didn't just forget and forgive and Regulus was surprised to feel a fugacious pang of regret at that thought.

Noticing the odd glances Poppy was sending in his direction, he purposely blanked his features and looked down while his fingers fastened the buttons of his distinguished robe of their own accord.

If he squeezed his eyelids shut the whispered, disbelieving confession of his cousin Narcissa echoed in his ears, as distinctly and clearly as if she was saying it today. "Lucius had said Severus' origins were tainted, but can you believe his mother was _that _estranged Prince? Your sacrifice was his father."

He could take in all over again his shock at realizing the creature he had killed the night of his initiation, whose blood had sealed the Dark Mark on his arm, had been not just somebody's parent but the father of a man whose magical skill and proud resilience before insults Regulus used to reluctantly envy. Only then had Regulus finally understood the full implications of his action. The Muggle had had a name, Tobias Snape, and the being that he had been taught to consider as merely a human-looking animal had truly walked and breathed and shared a life with _a blood-traitor witch. _Until an Avada Kedavra put a stop to that.

So Regulus had begun to question himself, to search for answers where he didn't suspect he would find them; later on, when he discovered the Dark Lord, he humiliated himself. His quest seemed to have revealed a whole new, senseless world. The Dark Lord and Severus Snape, the two most powerful wizards he knew of, were half-bloods and yet the purebloods seemed reluctant to broadcast the inferiority of their power and honor. Lord Voldemortwas insane; the Death Eaters' crusades were revolting more often than not, and Regulus had never been able to look Severus in the face again without feeling a murderer's shame rather a soldier's honor.

It was like spiraling out of one lifetime and straight into another one where nothing had meaning except the awareness that he had been wrong about everything.

Regulus smiled bitterly to himself, sliding out the Hospital Wing with a formal goodbye to a disgruntled mediwitch. One single lapse of judgment and you were tainted forever.

"Regulus!"

To his credit, he _tried _to not turn at the sound of that feminine, throaty voice calling his name. He remembered perfectly well his decision to ignore her if he happened to casually meet her along Hogwarts' corridors. But she had the gall to surprise him in that moment of absent contemplation and habit had him turning toward the faintly echoing sound with instinctiveswiftness.

She reached him with her light, resolute steps and he watched her approach with the same helpless, morbid interest he would reserve for a Giant Squid that was strangling a unicorn.

Charity Burbage was no extraordinary beauty, with her not particularly striking features and her common wavy brown locks, but it was easy to forget that when the distance between them was little enough to allow him to admire the light dancing in her hazel eyes. It wasn't fair: he had met her often during his deluded boyhood and he had considered her as less than nothing – only the half-blood reject his older brother paraded around to upset their mother for a very short time.

Now she was simply (yet there was nothing simple about it, was there?) Poppy's niece, the modest and gentle witch who had sacrificed her summer to help her aunt maintain secrecy about Regulus' recovery in the castle by assisting him when he was going through withdrawal.

Charity was the one who read to him to distract him when his body convulsed and he went into a cold sweat during his rougher nights, the one whose tired but triumphant gaze announced to him that they had managed to make it until dawn once again. She was the product of the one happy union between a pureblood and a Muggle he had ever heard of, who still had more grace in her little finger than all the proper witches he had known in his lifetime.

She smiled shyly up at him and Regulus prayed he wasn't blushing.

"Good evening, Charity," he greeted her formally, saying her name with nothing more than effortless politeness, but it didn't seem to matter to her because her smile widened in a goofy grin, leaving him to cope with an uncomfortable warmth he didn't know what do with.

"To you too." She shuffled her feet, looking very innocuous and very attractive. "I couldn't wait to tell you: Dumbledore offered me a job. I'll be the next teacher of Muggle Studies!"

She laughed nervously, which warmed him all the same, before adding, "I suppose it was unavoidable since I hang around Aunt Poppy all the time. He must have guessed it was either employ me or kick me out by force."

"I'm certain it was no bother. You have many beautiful qualities."

The flush rushing to her cheeks made him feel better and grateful that living with a thunderously bipolar mother had at least taught him how to sweet-talk females regardless of his emotional state.

Hating himself intensely, Regulus cleared his throat and added, "I-I have to go now."

Her radiance seemed to be somewhat diminished by his announcement but Charity just nodded understandingly, as if it was natural that he would prefer returning to his gloomy seclusion in a spectral, empty manor rather than talking to her in these ancient corridors.

"I'll bid you goodbye then, until the next time."

"Goodbye." But he was only few steps away when she called him back.

" Maybe it would be simpler if I owled to you next time I can't wait to tell you something."

"Probably." At this point, Regulus was certain Miss Innocent Burbage was using this tactic of surprising him on purpose; it did work wonders to push him into doing the opposite of what he would do otherwise. Who did she think she was, a Slytherin? "You know the address, I think."

She nodded and he eventually left, uncertain whether he wanted her to keep her unspoken promise and of his unwise acceptance of it. Nothing real could ever happen between them, but this unspoken fantasy that lingered in his head every time he met her was an irresistible act of self-indulgence. It brought him comfort in spite of its concrete impossibility...or maybe because of it.

Regulus had already idealized someone once – Sirius, so full of fury and determination, so uncaring about parental disapproval and expectations – and he knew idols never lived up to their expectations. They were bound to fall, and when it happened you were never quite as prepared as you fancied.

He had experienced that feeling only twice but that was enough to convince him a third time would most definitely not be the charm. The first time was when he had sat in Sirius' old room and realized that his older brother had truly moved out without saying goodbye to him; ever since Sirius had acquired James Potter as his best friend, he had decided he could afford to leave his little brother gathering dust among the ideals they had never shared. Giving up on him because it was simpler to begin a new life with another family. In spite of their differences, the boy Regulus had been was not expecting to just be…left behind.

The second time was the morning of his hearing as a Death Eater, when the Wizengamot had, considering his disability and his desertion, deemed it sufficient punishment to sentence him to house arrest of less than six months. Sirius had confronted him with accusing glares, a supportive and tense Potter behind his back.

_It seems our name still means something if they can let you off so easily._

_You don't know anything about it, brother._

_I thank the gods for that. _

The siblings had had no further contact since then, and Regulus couldn't find it in himself to wish otherwise. There was a part of him that wanted to explain to his big brother how different he felt now and ask for his acceptance.

But too many things had been done and said to be able to remedy the damage already done.

Maybe Regulus Arcturus Black was a wizard born to see all his beliefs disproved and his certainties destroyed: almost since his cradle, his parents had taught him that being a Black was the highest honor he could hope to deserve and that he was justified in looking down on certain inferior creatures...yet at the last, these creatures had saved him whereas those teachings had almost driven him to his death.

It was Kreacher, his faithful house-elf, who had saved his life; and it was Severus Snape, half-blood wizard and son of a man he had killed, to whom he owed his improving health.

Perhaps it was fitting that the first woman he fell in love with was of impure birth.

Let it never be said he was unable to appreciate the irony of his situation.


	4. Chapter 3: Face to Face

**Chapter 3: Face to face**

Spinner's End was exactly like Lily remembered.

Nothing was changed: from the rows of terraced houses linked by alleyways and crossing streets, the poor state of repair of the street lighting, the evidence of vandalism given by the many boarded up windows, the tall, finger-like chimney of the steel mill towering ghastly over the industrial area, to the general rudeness of the inhabitants, evident in the withering glances she received whenever she crossed the walk of a resident who resentfully eyed her clothes.

Even if she hadn't dressed to impress, she felt almost guilty for a moment, that in spite of a war, a would-be-divorce, an incapacitated son, and no employment, she was still far better off than the mill workers who lived here. James might have deserted his family, but at least he provided for them, enabling her to stay home with their son.

Yet her heart constricted painfully in recognition while she stood before the always popular fish-and-chips shop and her mind ran to the river whose stench could be smelled streets away.

She and Severus had had a favoured spot, distant enough from the mill that no rumour could disturb them and so close to those far-from-clean waters that the place was unpopular among adults as much as among other children. They studied there more often than in her or his house; it was neutral ground, without Petunia trying to intrude or his mother lingering around in a semi-conscious daze.

_Gryffindor is all about chasing shapeless ideals, but Slytherin…there's more to it than greed and ambition: it's the path to becoming all that you have the potential to be. Try to beat that! _he had told her there, during the summer after their first year, and she had almost shoved him in the river by accident. How scared she had been when she had grabbed his unbalanced body before he fell in the water, forcing him to fall on her instead. How hard they had laughed, after tumbling all over each other!

Back then, their dreams were all within reach; everything was very simple and free. It was easy to forget the differences that stood between them during the school term and hold on to the old camaraderie, because in that imperfect but secret, private spot, they felt like royalty. The river hadn't used to stink then and it was sad that the merciless tickling of time had soured their relationship without sparing at least its more central memento.

She cringed in disgust while her overactive imagination tried to picture the state their wild refuge had to be reduced to…disgraced and unsacred, like their lives. Who could have known that he would become a Death Eater and a spy? That she would be been married to Potter for a rather long bout of insanity? If someone had given her a charmed mirror where she could see again the children they had been, she wondered if her driving instinct would have been to hug or yell at them for their thoughtless ignorance of what was to come.

At last, Lily came to a point from where she could easily spot the Snape house, up where the street terminated in a cul-de-sac, slightly set apart from the other habitations, which were all attached, by virtue of being situated at the end of a row. She recognized its outline instantly, with an unexpected pang of nostalgia; it was anything but imposing, reflecting the typical architecture of buildings designed to house Victorian workers, with only two small rooms below and two upstairs. Her gaze wandered around, oddly hungry for familiar details, barely glimpsing the outdoor lavatory in the yard at the back. She knew there was no bathroom inside and she smiled faintly, not in bemusement but in fondness, remembering how Severus had _never _grown into the habit of washing his hair daily, even when, at Hogwarts, it would have been both comfortable and convenient. It was so very Sev-like to disregard completely any tactless jabs he received from their schoolmates and take it as a matter of pride to not do anything about it.

She knocked at his door; a magical buzz tingled under her fingertips when she grazed the wooden surface and produced the oddest impression of "echoing" within the house. The door must be charmed to differentiate Muggle visitors from magical ones.

In spite of being unsurprised when it opened right away, Lily experienced a faint disorientation when she found a tall, dark-clad figure standing in front of her. Even here, he wore black robes that easily blended with the shadows behind his back and made his cadaverous complexion stand out even more against the living, penetrating intensity of those black eyes.

"Good evening," she said hesitantly. "Albus said you'd taken a few days off."

His features maintained a morbid, unsettling stillness as if they had been etched in unfeeling marble. Because she was smaller than him, Lily had to slightly look up to properly meet his eyes; the unnatural blandness there would have made a less brave woman shiver. He didn't look cold , but there was an intangible absence of animation in his face and stance and eyes which made him appear entirely removed from the present situation.

"Come in." He stood aside brusquely, annoyance reassuringly creeping into those four syllables.

Lily squared her shoulders and entered, chin up determinedly. The door opened directly onto the small sitting room, bare of any commodities but a sofa and an armchair. As she followed his invitation to sit on the sofa, her gaze lingered on the bookcases, which were simply everywhereshe turned, even on the back of two internal doors (one led into the kitchen, she remembered; the other opened onto a narrow staircase to the bedrooms upstairs), and she wonderd what could have driven Severus to stay here, in this place he loathed so bitterly, when he was so blatantly short of space.

"I know Albus has contacted you."

"Do you mind?"

"I thought he was a little premature to involve you at this stage. I'm not sure of what I can do for your son."

Raising her eyebrows expressively, she picked on his choice of words right away. "But you aren't of the same opinion any more?"

"I'm willing to concede that the Headmaster has a knack for seeing beyond ordinary boundaries and yet being right. Can I offer you some tea?"

"Um, no thank you." Lily blinked quickly, thwarted by his Dumbledore-like abrupt change of subject.

"I take it you have questions about the treatment, but I don't know what details Albus has shared with you."

Leaning back against the uncomfortably hard sofa, Lily relaxed, feeling visibly more in her element as she allowed her brain to focus on what she had learnt.

"He owled me a few documents among Poppy's medical files, all anonymous of course. I understand you're associating your experimental brews with Gregory's Unctuous Unction, altered with, I assume, an emotion-balancing mineral?"

"I've used a combination of them." He tilted his head to the side, his chin leaning on the back of his hand, and Lily had the oddest impression Severus was truly seeing her for the first time. It emboldened her enough to voice a curiosity she had had since she had read his side notes and felt the stirrings of her old interest for this discipline, pushing her to explore again her long-neglected library.

"Moonstone?"

Seeing her inclined forward almost conspiratorially, in a bizarre mimicry of a pose she had assumed often when they were just children studying outdoors, most often on her porch or by the river, coaxed a reluctant smile out of him. "Amethyst and jade, but in your case, I would substitute the latter with obsidian."

It made sense; obsidian amulets were frequently used to ease reversion to normal states of consciousness after astral travels and the like, but also to transform "heavy" emotions and energies into lighter ones. Lily remembered, after a few moments' hard thinking, that that stone was also known to provoke nightmares or depression in some predisposed persons, given its powerful work on the subconscious mind. Amethyst's more gentle influence should prevent the effect anyway. Brilliant.

"Then there's that old Egyptian remedy. Saint Mungo's tried it already, more than a year ago, but Harry showed no response." She couldn't recall the unpronounceable proper name of the remedy, and she would die before using the vulgar version of it in front of Mr Know-It-All.

"He might have been too young to metabolize it. If you were to place your child in the testing program, we should begin by trying its different dosages all over again, because Potter's biochemical is definitely different now. Even so, I expect no improvement before combining it with other medications. But before we stop it and see how he handles the Orphicus Draught, I need to know how much he can tolerate before developing a dependency but without losing its effectiveness."

"How much time would this preliminary phase last?"

"Approximately three or five weeks, then we might begin to gradually administer the Orphicus Draught and the Gregory's Unction first, later adding the remaining options, and last, the Vicia Torporis Salve."

Lily nodded, uncertain about where the conversation was supposed to be going now that she couldn't think of any other questions to ask. In the end, it all added up to whether or not she had the spine to take the leap, and the decision had been made almost since the moment she had received the letter.

"I think I'd like to try."

"Does that mean you have made a definite decision, or will you need more time to think about it?" There was no mistaking the challenge in that politely sarcastic snap, but Lily didn't back down, just regarded him a little more intently.

"I'm absolutely _certain_ I want Harry included in your program and I won't change my mind. Do you plan to be antagonistic for the duration of our direct interaction, or is this just a one-time deal? "

Severus's smirk was slow and faint as a ripple on water.

"I merely have difficulty believing your husband would agree to allow his only descendant anywhere near me. I won't tolerate his interference once we have started. As a matter of fact, it would be even better if I didn't see him at all."

"That won't be a problem," she retorted, unconcerned with the sarcasm in her words. "James is on an assignment for the Ministry now and he isn't allowed to have contact with anyone. I'll deal with him when the time comes."

Irritatingly, her inquisitioner raised his eyebrows as if to suggest he had his doubts but he would hold her to that promise.

"Good."

Lily sighed, not eager to change the subject but more sure than ever that it was unavoidable. "If Harry and I are going to stay at the castle, we'll see each other almost every day. I appreciate what you're doing more than I can express – and look, wouldn't it be better if we talked out the tension between us right away? We were friends once; it's okay if you don't want that any more, but it won't do to pretend we're strangers. "

During her rambling, her eyes didn't stray from on her hands. Her willpower centred on keeping them folded in her lap and _not _playing nervously with the hem of her sleeve. She glanced up when she heard him chuckle softly. If there was humour here, she was missing it.

"It's not a matter of wanting, Lily." With that admission, Severus seemed to deflate all at once: he didn't look remote any more, just weary and maybe disappointed.

"Then what is?"

He shook his head vehemently, as if the gesture could enable him to shrug off the empathy evident in her voice. He rose suddenly, looking around and wishing the room was large enough to allow him to pace the way he liked to.

Lily regarded him curiously, marvelling at how readable the man was at this exact moment, when until a few minutes ago his mood had been nearly impenetrable. When his head turned to her – the move so serpentine in quickness than she mentally cringed as if he had risked twisting his neck – and their gazes finally met, the redhead was astounded at the extent of the feverish emotion she found there.

"I never meant to hurt you, Lily, in any way. Never."

It was almost a plea, and although she didn't understand where the mercurial change of attitude was coming from, his sincerity was so tangible than she couldn't find it in herself to question it. "Okay," she nodded shakily, "I believe you."

The speed with which he came to stand before her surprised her. Severus only moved like that when he was nervous – some things didn't change over the years, it seemed – and then she found him kneeling to put them face to face.

"But only because I didn't mean to bring you harm. That's not to say I haven't."

A fervent silence stretched between them, their faces inches apart, and her mind felt completely empty, right before she suddenly remembered snippets of past events and conversations, disconnected pieces of a puzzle which now acquired concrete meaning.

"_You're_ the Death Eater who overheard the prophecy and delivered it to him," Lily whispered numbly, hoping he would insult her for her assumption yet knowing he wouldn't.

"I didn't imagine it could be about you—"

"But it would have been about someone. About someone else's kid." That awareness broke her inside, but it wasn't the angry kind of break or a desperate one. It was more like a grey resignation, the undesired certainty that evil could still reach out to touch anything.

Severus rose as slowly as he had knelt, his oily hair falling over his face and hiding it from her view, his towering height not as intimidating it had been a short awhile ago. "I can't take back my choices and I won't insult you with apologies that mean nothing at the end of the day."

"But you tried making up for them. You're still trying. This research of yours was meant for Harry, wasn't it?" She wasn't justifying his actions, or offering him consolation. It would have been absurd. She was just stringing facts together, exploring the potential connections between them.

"Yes."

She had been enraged for so long: at Bellatrix, at Peter, at James for killing Rodolphus and trusting Peter, at Sirius for coming up with that stupid switch of secret keepers. At herself for going along and accepting as a friend a man who hadn't truly convinced her to respect him, for having trained herself to not see the casual cruelty with which the Marauders treated each other, reflected in the way they took Remus for granted and in their amused complacency at Wormtail's eagerness to please. The seeds of betrayal had already been there, but she had dismissed them for no better reason than her need to hold on to the illusion of a shelter in the storm.

Lily found she no longer had the energy to be angry or desperate; the reality was that Voldemort was gone, Harry was mentally impaired, and Severus had the will and the skill to help her. Yet there was more than that; in the past he had been so angry with the very world around them, his rage spilling out of control in both his words and actions. But there were no traces of that fury in him now, only a weary bitterness hidden behind layers and layers of that indolent control he had been perfecting since they were children.

Certainly there was plenty of blame to spread around for Harry's tragedy, but Lily couldn't avoid feeling sad for both Severus and herself; they were both different people today, but there was no escaping the consequences of their past mistakes. Fleetingly, Lily wondered if some mornings he rose, like she did, with the distinct sensation that he was living somebody else's life.

In that instant, in spite of all their differences and the time that had passed, she felt an instinctive closeness to him. Which was strangely convenient but doubtlessly insane. Perhaps she was in shock. Merlin, she had often pondered the notion that her childhood friend had done horrible things, but she hadn't considered Harry would be involved in any of them.

"Why are you telling me this, if it's not my forgiveness you seek?"

Severus didn't answer her and she didn't really expect him to. Lily squeezed her eyelids shuts and breathed in with determination. When she spoke again her voice was strong, free of hesitation.

"Harry is all what matters now. If you want to help him, then we're on the same side and I can live with the knowledge of what you've done. I have to."

AN: To give credit where it's deserved, my description of Spinner's End was inspired by an essay at HP Lexicon by Claire M.Jordan: 'Where's Spinder's End?'


	5. Chapter 4:Homecoming

**Chapter 4: Homecoming**

Dumbledore located Lily's temporary residence in one of the rooms on the fourth floor, at the end of a narrow corridor. Lily resolved to draw less attention to their moving in by reaching the castle a reasonable but short time after lunch. No matter how long she dealt with this kind of behaviour, she wouldn't ever get accustomed to the wary or panicked looks people used to throw at Harry whenever she took him outside with her. The wizarding world might be advanced in healing ailments that Muggles considered fatal, but it was completely out of sorts when it came to mental illness. Wizards and witches simply refused to accept that condition as curable, on cultural principle. If magic resonated between your mind and your heart, then losing control of the former was the worst thing that could happen to you, and it was unthinkable to view it as anything but an intrinsic and unrecoverable flaw. Yet it seemed Muggle and magical folk shared at least one common basis: Lily had stated that they both tended to either try to change the subject when it seemed her child might come up in conversation (even to the point of looking anywhere but in his direction when he was present) or to show a vulgar, inappropriate curiosity expressed in rude stares and uncomfortable questions, or palpable awkwardness that shone through in more forms and measures than she could have imagined.

Yet all her precautions didn't save her from the alternately irritating and embarrassing onslaught of self-consciousness she experienced following the Headmaster along the Hogwarts passages as small groups of students whispered behind them, or glanced sidelong at her son. Overcome by a frustrated desire to protect him, she clung to the Harry's hands while he followed by her side, feeling him clinging back with equal strength but knowing better than to read into it anything more than the reflex it was.

Severus wasn't part of the small entourage of teachers that welcomed her, and Lily couldn't decide whether she was relieved or disappointed; still, she could find comfort in Minerva's severe but solid presence and the way the gossipy Hufflepuffs and brazen Gryffindors alike hurried to look away when her stern gaze exposed their nosiness.

Lily didn't notice any Ravenclaws or Slytherins, but it was probably due to their more subtle interest in a new guest's arrival; they were far less likely to _accidentally _crossing her path during her first day. If anything, she could expect a greater subtlety on their part.

Near the end of the seemingly endless tour, she recognized a mirror they passed which hid the secret passageway to Hogsmeade that James had revealed to her on their first date to impress her. It struck her as impossible that this was the same castle where she had received an education and grown from a child into a woman.

She didn't notice how tense she was until they reached their destination. Minerva left them as the Headmaster shooed her and Harry into their new room. The moment the door was closed behind her she felt a huge weight lift off her shoulders, and her knees almost gave out. Theirs was a moderately wide rectangular room, with one double bed and a smaller one where Harry would be able to rest if she ever managed to convince him to sleep by himself. It wouldn't be a problem right away, since her son would spend his first months at Hogwarts inside the Hospital Wing. She counted on being able to persuade Poppy to allow her to stay by his side at night; there was no way she would leave him alone.

Lily was left to her own devices until the evening; she spent the most of those hours looking out the window and expecting a sensation of homecoming, which failed to materialize. She had always loved rooms with a view; this one looked out on the sloping grounds that led down toward the forest and the lake. Lily described for Harry the wonders of the wilderness that she saw, and she told him about the first time she had arrived here. He sat in her lap, his head on her breast and his unseeing eyes turned to whatever she was pointing to at the moment.

Severus stood beside Poppy as she refilled her medicine cabinets, cataloguing over and over in his head each salve and phyltre which came to his attention. It was a poor occupation, but it would suffice to keep his thoughts in order until Lily and her son came in, sparing him the annoyance of contemplating why the Healer appeared calmer than usual, energetically checking that everything was in order rather than trying, even once, to engage him in useless socializing.

When he tried to picture how Lily would react to him after the last conversation they'd had, he came up with a dozen drastically conflicting scenarios. He wasn't sure she had realized the full implications of his responsibility in Harry's situation; maybe a more private contemplation of their exchange had put the events in a different perspective, or maybe she was truly ready to forgive him, but he had prepared himself for both possibilities. Although he wasn't in the habit of putting much trust in what came too easily, Severus didn't regret telling her the truth.

Giving Albus another weapon to use against him wasn't an option worth considering. He was no longer a child whose yearning for Lily Evans extended to an inarticulate desire to keep her for himself ,and Severus wasn't so blind to his weaknesses as to think he could resist Lily's closeness without reaching for more. She was the last person alive that he had ever loved, and while he wouldn't define her as the reason for his wrong choices or his turning to the Light, she was probably nothing less than the living symbol of both. Whether she was aware of it or not, this fact gave her a power he couldn't fight unless she fought him back.

"Oh, Lily, we were right to wait to meet your little one!"

Severus snorted to himself in disgust in the face of the totally uncalled for, sugar-coated, and obvious greeting. Acknowledging the recent arrival with a stiff nod, he hoped fiercely that Poppy Pomfrey wasn't, in spite of all the past evidence which hadn't led him to think it, one of those women easily reduced to silly gibbering in front of a baby.

"Good evening, Lily." He welcomed her, allowing his attention to stray a little longer than necessary on her face. Her hair was held up in a tight, high bun and although he loved the way that cherry-coloured tangle of locks complimented her skin when they fell loose and free on her shoulders, he couldn't sincerely regret how much more exposed this arrangement left her features.

"Hello, Severus." The smile she gave him was strained, but when Poppy took Harry's free hand and the child turned to follow her away from his mother, Lily came to stand beside him, letting go of her brat. Her physical proximity gave the man so violent and unexpected an inner shudder of dark pleasure, blended together with anguish and nausea, that it was difficult to focus immediately on the patient Poppy was already visiting. He reminded himself of the charts on the table next to the ointment cabinet with shameful gratefulness.

"I thought you would like to have a look at these." He handed her the documents and watched her slowly leaf through the booklet that contained the treatment charts, her eyes straying reluctantly from the pages to glance back to her child-creature, who was passively submitting to more or less standard diagnostic spells.

"Can I keep a copy?"

"These are copies, already. Meant for you."

"Oh. Thank you." He received another, less strained smile; it made the situation both better and worse, but it also made it easier to concentrate on her boy.

His newest "test subject", as Snape liked to think of him, withstood the Healer's ministrations with unnatural complacency. The child turned when he was gently manipulated and stayed still until a new external stimulation prompted him to do otherwise. Most of his gestures and postures were automatic; the Potions Master recalled very clearly the impression he had received when Lily had led him in, as if she was pulling her vaguely recalcitrant son along rather than walking with a uncaringly complacent one.

When Poppy had gently ruffled his hair before taking his hand, Potter Junior had looked up, orienting his head toward the contact's source but quitting the instant his mother released her hold on him and the other woman guided him ahead in her stead.

"Poppy, do you mind checking his reflexes before proceeding with the rest?"

The matron half-turned in his direction, eyeing the man with an interest Lily didn't miss. "Not at all, Severus."

Lily's surging concern – probably unnecessary and prompted by a biologically programmed impulse to obsess over details – was calmed by a discovery of amusement in the mediwitch's stressing of the adviser's full name and his answering frown. Honestly, this man had taken himself seriously enough _before_ becoming a professor...

While Severus observed with more attention Harry's responses to Poppy's testing, Lily's gaze produced a faint tingle on the edge of his Occlumency-trained awareness as it traveled from his face to the check-up that was occurring.

"His reflexes are flawless," Poppy commented with a proud nod at the end, and Lily forced herself to nod back and to state the obvious.

"Good." Although it sounded slightly like a question as she slanted a probing glance to the silently pensive man at her side, whose face was unnervingly neutral.

"Perfect," he remarked, with a sarcasm born more out of habit than anything else.

They_ were _perfect, and therein lay the problem. The way the Cruciatus worked was by "persuading" nerve endings that they perceived a pain beyond endurance, whereas the Flameo Curse that Bellatrix Lestrange was supposed to have inflicted on Harry Potter acted on the nervous system directly, forcing it to damage itself, sending around opposite and/or random impulses which translated in unforeseeable or unwanted physical responses. It was entirely plausible that the acute damage caused by the Flameo had altered the physiological pathway followed by the nervous impulses, creating a reverberating circuit between the central nervous system and the autonomic one. Put another way, the curse might have "taught" the neurons to generate only opposite impulses, which voided each other, on the level at which the two systems connected, so the CNS was isolated. If he considered these two possibilities, it made sense that the boy's reflexes were perfectly conserved while his cerebral function left something to be desired. Yet the hypothesis didn't please him fully. He should wait until the treatment either confirmed it or excluded it.


	6. Chapter 5:Ineluctability

**Chapter 5: Ineluctability**

Once the initial awkwardness was dispelled, Lily and Severus' progression toward each other, Albus Dumbledore noticed with moderate surprise, was gradual but steady. They started by sitting by each other during meals and then they could occasionally be seen talking in the hallways. Their conversations started and finished often on Harry, but often traipsed over the smallest, most trivial things. It amused the Headmaster at first, the way they prudently studied each other as if their "opponent" was a wild animal easily threatened into defensive ferocity. Then he had surprised them passionately discussing the virtues of a certain book in the fourth floor Library, after what was probably an accidental meeting. The animation on Lily's face as she defended her viewpoint to her old friend, right before the couple noticed Albus' stealthy entrance, was something Albus had not witnessed in a long time. It had a almost…childlike quality, and the look Severus had sent him before his expression was quickly schooled into emptiness was been defiant.

This development concerned Albus, but his misgivings, the old man admitted with reluctance, had little to do with a grandfatherly exigency to shield a young woman's vulnerability from an ex-Death Eater's devotion. Lily was an adult, and although Severus' affection could appear as bordering on obsessive, there was no denying the young man would die before hurting her intentionally.

Passion could be volatile, but Love had a way of becoming a saving grace.

_You disgust me_, Albus had once said to a younger Severus, meaning every word of it. The statement was no longer true, because somewhere during his early meetings with his willing spy in war time, the Headmaster had begun to suspect something which had eluded him before: Severus Snape had not sided with Voldemort because he took pleasure in the impiety the Death Eaters perpetrated but rather because he didn't perceive any concrete difference between the two sides of the fence.

Both sides had been hostile to him, either because he was an half-blood or a Dark Arts practitioner, and the young Slytherin had probably made his choice based more on personal inclinations and resentments than an abstract sense of morality.

Irrational as it was, there was a part of Albus Dumbledore which took responsibility for that choice, because when a fifteen-year-old Severus had stood in his office, stonily demanding that the Marauders be expelled for pushing him into a corner with a werewolf, the Headmaster's refusal hadn't been motivated by favouritism for a group of thoughtless pranksters. It was simply that he hadn't felt like exposing Remus Lupin's condition for the sake of satisfying the resentment of someone like Severus…talented, intelligent, bitter, and hungry for recognition. Someone too much like Tom Riddle.

It wasn't entirely wrong to say that Albus had looked on Severus with suspicion for the very same reasons he had looked away (as long he had been able to) from Tom Riddle's growing malice. Both boys had reminded him of the worst part of himself…the part that had taken Ariana and Aberforth away from him.

In previous years Severus Snape hadn't been ashamed to take out on his students his resentment for the profession he was forced by circumstances to embrace, yet Albus had seen the younger man prove himself as the most dedicated among his Heads of House. The Potions Master controlled his Slytherins with an iron fist, for which they admired and feared him equally.

"His Slytherins," Severus often defined them in conversation, unaware of how proprietary the name sounded upon his lips – parent-like, as if those boys and girls were the closest thing to a family he had left. Certainly Severus took pride in that part of his academic role, in defending his protégées' interests the way nobody had done for him. And then there was Regulus Black, for whom he showed no animosity in spite of the murder of his father…for all the Slytherin concept of making allies rather than friends, that truce held premise untainted by loathing.

So there was good in Severus Snape, regardless of the extent of his regrets for the past and outside his loyalty to Lily. The notion stimulated Albus Dumbledore to wonder if after all the tragic predicament in which they found themselves wouldn't have been avoided if so many years ago a certain Headmaster had made a different choice. If he had shown to that younger, scathing Severus that Darkness wasn't the only path to the power he had access to, would his decision have been different? It was a question he would never find an answer for, just as he would never have known if a more actively pursued interest in the young Tom Riddle's doings would have spared the wizarding world from another war.

Today Albus could only watch older, more scarred versions of Severus and Lily drifting toward each other, with the oddest feeling of ineluctability. Unwise as they could be, he would be more than willing to allow the redhead the benefit of her choices, if those had not had the potential to interfere with his plans.

Any peace at present was on borrowed time: someday Voldemort would return and the Order of Phoenix would need their spy back in action. If Lily grew to return Severus' love, Severus' availability could change. It wasn't advisable to lose a double agent so skilled in Mind Arts and dissimulation; he was too difficult to replace. It would be simple enough to put a stop to two childhood companions becoming reacquainted with each other; at this stage Lily wouldn't recover from learning about Severus' culpability in her son's illness. If Albus told her…the trust blossoming between them would be frayed beyond repair, and it would be all for the greater good. It was a card he had played often to justify his actions, but he disliked pulling it on two people he respected and had came to care about. Perhaps all he had to do was take due precautions and prepare Remus Lupin to fit the role by pushing him to cultivate contact with other werewolves. It would be believable: Remus had already isolated himself from the remaining Marauders for a while.

Albus had barely reached the door into the Medical Wing when ear-splitting screams startled him out of his musings. The sound had actually been audible until he had put his hand on the handle, unmistakable proof that a Silencio Spell had been attached to the wall of the adjoining rooms, but the spectacle that met his eyes when the elderly man entered was even less pleasant.

The screams, however loud, weren't pained and they could have been passed off as those of any capricious child in a fit of temper.

But Harry lay on his bed, his hands reaching out as though to shove somebody away, his green eyes wide open and his body twisting slowly, purposelessly…the child looked like a puppet whose strings were being pulled carelessly by a bored puppeteer. It was one of the most horrendous scenes Dumbledore had had the misfortune to witness in a long and eventful life.

Poppy stood beside Harry, swirling her wand into air to direct confinement spells which would keep the child from either hurling himself out of the bed or damaging himself without constraining his movements. In a corner of the room, the boy's mother looked appalled, her shoulders hunched and her face white, wide jade eyes unwavering from the small figure thrashing with such dreadful slowness on the mattress. In that moment, her arms hugging herself as if to gather strength, Lily looked more like a child than her Harry.

Only one individual on the scene actively recognized Albus' arrival, and he appeared untouched as ever by the agitation around him.

"What is happening here, Severus?" Albus asked the other wizard, who had came to stand at his side. He had known that today they would begin testing the dosages of that Egyptian Elixir, but it was nothing that would justify _this._

"The Nephertemisius Elixir required a dosage higher than we expected. This is the first immediate response we've been able to elicit."

"I don't remember your other patient reacting like this." Although Regulus Black's condition had required only a low dosage.

"His cerebral functions were differently altered. Right now, the boy's mind is connecting for the first time with his body."

"Therefore you are absolutely certain this is normal?" Albus turned toward Lily, whose presence at his back was as sudden and unexpected as the weakness in her voice.

"Absolutely certain," Severus echoed, something like gentleness leaking through his reply.

"Lily dear, maybe you shouldn't stay here."

"Where else should I be? My place is with my son."

The young mother went from composed to spitting in a few moments at Madam Pomfrey's gentle suggestion, startling the mediwitch into silence, although Poppy was used to handling her share of hysterical parents. Fortunately, Severus wasn't so easily influenced.

"You aren't of any use to him or to yourself at this moment, especially not in this state. It would be better if you took some fresh air."

The other man's pitiless resolution gained him a fiery glare at first, but then Lily closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, calming herself at once. Albus sighed, making decisions on more levels than this one.

"Severus, why don't you accompany Lily outside? I'm sure she would greatly benefit from a walk."

"Good idea." Poppy nodded enthusiastically, regaining her usual vigour.

"He is needed _here_," Lily remarked, feeling like a hypocrite; there was a part of her that longed to be removed fast from this room, but the rest of her burned with guilt over it.

"What use could he be now?" Poppy shrugged. "All that is left to do is a Healer's job and I would do it better without the two of you fussing over our little Harry."

Unable to decide whether he was more aggravated at being called useless or for the offensive definition of what he was doing here as "fussing", Severus found himself experiencing a moment of extreme discomfiture when three different pairs of eyes settled expectantly on him. He blinked twice, mentally reviewing the scene, and finally understanding.

"Fine." He put his hand on Lily's shoulder, his fingertips barely grazing the texture of her robe before his ghost of a touch was gone.

The huge relief the young woman experienced once they were outside the Medical Ward shamed her deeply.

"I can escort to your room if you prefer," Severus suggested, but she shook her head wearily.

"No, I think I'm feeling a little claustrophobic now. Some fresh air will do me good. But you don't have to accompany me if you're busy."

She hoped against hope that he wouldn't take the chance to get away from her, because she really, really didn't want be alone now. Even if the prospect of being closeted inside her room made her feel trapped and breathless, the idea of going outside and facing the students' glances, confronting the open space of the Hogwarts grounds, was just as scary. Perfect: she suffered from an hysterical fear of being assaulted by open spaces and suffocated by tight ones if she was left alone…maybe she was truly close to a nervous breakdown.

"I could use a walk if you can use the company."

That made her wish for her sense of humour: you could always rely on Severus Snape for an ambiguous answer in a difficult situation. "Okay then."

She walked as if in a daze until they were outside the castle, the weight of his hand on the small of her back sustaining her: he had probably noticed she was going to be too slow unless he directed her somehow. For her part, Lily didn't even realize where he was leading them for a long while…then she saw the outline of Hagrid's hut.

During their second year, when the inter-House hostilities had made it advisable to keep their friendship more discreet, they had used to come often to the pumpkin patch behind the wooden cabin. Living at Hogwarts could become surreal: memories grew too cumbersome if the expectation of the present didn't match up. When had she became so fond of reminiscence, anyway?

Lily felt strange, hyperaware of the trees' rustling leaves and of the singing birds around them, of the man standing quietly behind her, yet at the same time incredibly distant, as if she was tucked somewhere deep inside herself.

They stood on the hill, admiring the vivacious colours of the patch in the distance, the plants' green and the orange of their fruits gloriously blending. When had they stopped walking?

"Sometimes I forget it's not…normal. The way Harry is, I mean. But then I remember…and it's worse." Put like that, her thoughts were pure nonsense. Lily croaked a humourless laugh.

"Merlin, I'm not even sure what I'm saying!"

"No, I understand it. I understand it well." It would have been presumptuous of him to saying he felt the same, only less so, because getting used to the abstract concept of something was easy but it didn't mean the concrete reality wouldn't on occasion smack you in the face.

A light breeze played with her locks and Lily imagined staying here, frozen forever, lost in the grass's scent and the wild but soothing beauty of nature. When her sight grew blurry, she dropped her eyelids closed, determined to wish the tears gone; she was no longer a little girl and there was no sensible reason to cry.

While she was half-turning to retrace the path of their walk, her foot slid and the witch lost her balance, only to have her fall roughly arrested by a strong arm sneaking around her waist. She ended up colliding head-on with Severus, her face pressed into his thick, black robes which smelled faintly like cinnamon and…mint? A side benefit of hovering around cauldrons for days at a time, she thought with a bit of envy.

In her fall, she had grabbed a fistful of his robes. She didn't let go even though Severus manoeuvred her back to her feet with a indelicate deliberateness which she resented a little. Lily held onto him stubbornly, waiting for him to push her away. She wasn't completely sure of why she wanted so much to prolong this contact:. Their positions were awkward and her companion, who was anything but a cuddly type, was bound to get pissed off at her…but _this, _right now, was calming her and grounding her.

Severus' hold on her waist loosened and Lily anticipated he would draw back from her. It shocked her when the man pulled her closer instead, bringing his other arm to surround her in a loose, unconstraining embrace. They remained like that until she felt stronger, Severus unmoving but supportive around her, and then they separated. They took over their walk, pretending it had never happened and commenting about how autumn was ending.


	7. Chapter6: The Blackest Tale

**Chapter 6: The Blackest Tale**

"So Kreacher went to the Dark Lord. The Dark Lord didn't tell him what they were to do, but took the elf with him to a cave beside the sea. Beyond the cave there was a cavern, and in the cavern was a great black lake and a boat with which to traverse it. They reached an island and then they came to basin full of a potion. The Dark Lord ordered Kreacher to drink it all, and he did so because the will of his master was for him to follow the other wizard's directives."

At this point the narrator broke his tale, his eyes not on the taciturn listener before him but rather on the grandfather clock that dominated the room with its gothic ghastliness. Out of all the rooms in Grimmauld Place, the library on the third floor was the one in which he favoured ending his evenings, even when he did nothing but stare at the countless shelves filled with thick, well-kept volumes. He could swear he knew every title by heart, even those belonging to books he had never opened.

After a beat, he began again. "The Dark Lord dropped a locket into the empty basin before refilling it with the same concoction and sailed away, leaving the agonized elf to his own devices; yet Kreacher managed to come back to this house because those were his orders. It wasn't until later that his young master asked Kreacher to lead him to the cave."

"Did you asked him to drink the poison?"

There was no accusation or disapproval in the inquiry, but Regulus felt insulted all the same as he shook his head in negation. Although pureblood wizards – and Blacks in particular –were not known for being overly caring about the magical creatures bound to their service, loyalty meant something within a ancient family. Blacks protected their servants, even if only to slaughter them themselves. Furthermore, he had always been fond of Kreacher; what Slytherin wouldn't be, after spending such a large part of his childhood and adolescence practicing his spells on the adoring elf? He wouldn't be able to buy his redemption with Kreacher's death, even he was just one elf. Gods, how tired he was of the blood on his hands! Would he ever stop feeling it contemning his very essence?

"I couldn't ask him, when I so strongly suspected the second time around he wouldn't survive. I would have drunk it myself, but Rookwood and Lucius were there, hidden among the shadows. I knew when I saw them that I had been marked for death." Who else would the Dark Lord send to execute him, if not his cousin-in-law? Treason was a taint to be cleared within the family. And Rookwood had been the one to assist in Regulus' initiation, so it was his responsibility as well.

"I was lucky they judged me unworthy of a quick death. After torturing me, they left me for dead, and Kreacher, who I had commanded to return here, came back to rescue me." The cunning his elf had demonstrated on that occasion still evoked pride in Regulus. He had ordered Kreacher to leave him, but he hadn't considered _forbidding _the elf to return for him. Nor had he expected, in spite of the transparent veneration his servant had often proved toward his masters (Regulus and his mother, at least), that Kreacher would of his own accord strive to save him.

Regulus regarded Severus with more attention, but the other man looked back with a contemplative air about him which gave nothing away. "No ironic commentary, Severus? It's most unusual from you."

"I was in doubt as to whether to commend you for your idiocy or pity it in silence. You certainly brought it up to new heights with this asinine idea." Oddly, the snark came across as amused more than insulting, and the smirk firmly in place on the other man's mouth was unmistakably complacent. Mind you, Severus seemed to be in a better mood lately – more relaxed in a way that could have escaped an untrained eye. Regulus wondered if it could have something to do with whatever had persuaded Severus to bother coming to Grimmauld Place for their weekly check-in rather than allowing Regulus back into the castle. Charity had written about Harry Potter, of course; she helped her aunt to treat him whenever there was any need.

Severus had been so reservedabout the two new presences at Hogwarts that Regulus felt fairly authorized to speculate, with all the time he had on his hands. With the Potion Master before him, it was the unspoken which mattered the most. The youngest Black could remember, from what he perceived as ages ago, Avery and Mulciber's unconcealed disdain for the time Severus spent on a certain red-haired Muggle-born, right before a grand scene when the other Slytherin had publicly snapped at her by insulting her origins. It was shame the whole matter had held so little interest for his still-childlike self then, because now Regulus found it engaging.

Relieved that the general mood of this conversation wasn't turning as grim he had expected, Regulus emptied in one gulp his glass of Firewhisky, uncaring of the faint scowl of disapproval his chosen confidante sported as his black eyes remained focused solely on Regulus.

Black eyes…Muggles never had completely black eyes, just as they hadn't yellow, silver, or violet eyes, unlike wizards and witches. No wonder Severus had never raised suspicions regarding his bloodline, in spite of his virtually unknown last name…no wonder it had never occurred to Regulus to guess until it was too late.

The vicious burning of liquor down his throat helped to dissimulate the uneasiness of everything, for him at least.

He hadn't ever spoken to a living soul except Kreacher of that horrible day, and he had never revealed what he knew about the Horcruxes at all. Those secrets had been with him so long that sharing them spurred in Regulus relief and regret alike: he had buried them at the very centre of himself, and their loss left him coping with a gaping hole.

"You must have given them a reason to suspect you."

Regulus inclined his head, considering yet again the question he had posed to himself time and time again.

"There was something strange in the air at that time, an odd excitement shared by both Bella and Lucius. I – I tried to talk to Narcissa about it, but she possessed little information, although she desired even that little. At last she gave in, at my insistence, and I learnt that the Dark Lord had entrusted Lucius with a treasure – a diary, blank but capable of independent thought."

Severus gave him a sharp look, his expression no longer impassive but hard. "How do you know what qualities the diary possessed? Did she show it to you or tell about it herself?"

"I – yes. She knew very little about the item, so I asked her to let me examine it. She was so afraid, when we turned its empty pages, just to have that cursed object demanding to know who we were…I couldn't ask Narcissa for more than she had already done that night. I had seen where Lucius kept it and I knew I should have to come back for it before going after the locket."

"Have you done it?"

"I never had the chance to go back to Malfoy Manor without my cousin-in-law being present – and then, as more time went by, I began to wondering whether I could accomplish the feat without endangering Narcissa. So I resolved to destroy the locket and wrote a letter for Sirius, charmed to reach him only after my death. He wouldn't have shared my scruples."

In retrospect, it was very clear to Regulus that his actions had been dictated by sheer impatience to end a charade that was eating him from within. Had he merely been searching for way to justify his death, giving it the purpose his life had lacked? Had he always been such a coward, even when he had sought to rise above his mistakes? Perhaps his attempts to distance himself from his past had only pushed him into emulating his brother's most senseless, reckless daring. He was more than a bit surprised that he hadn't been mocked by now for this blatant error.

"Narcissa wouldn't have confided in her husband about your curiosity, regardless of her distrust of it."

"No. But maybe there were surveillance spells of which she was unaware that gave us away." It wasn't in the deeper nature of his cousin to create conflicts when she could avoid them. Narcissa was particularly good at turning a blind eye to what she disliked witnessing, and her memory could become very selective about unpleasant events. She hadn't enough loyalty to the Dark Lord's propaganda to risk a family member for its sake, regardless of how well she was able to parrot it for her own convenience. Narcissa would have kept it quiet.

"Or perhaps the diary itself has revealed your visit to Lucius your visit. Have you confounded it?"

Regulus shook his head in negation, his cheeks reddening a little at the other man's snort; he found it difficult to tell where the faults of his own schemes ended and Severus' paranoia began.

"Why didn't you go to Dumbledore with this information, in all the time you were at Hogwarts? You must have expected I would tell him about it. Unless you think I'm still faithful to the Dark Lord, but then it would make no sense for you to have this conversation with me."

Regulus waved the notion away and stretched back in the dragon-leather armchair, resisting a sudden impulse to reach for Severus' still invitingly full glass.

"It isn't easy to explain, and I'm not proud of it, but after the war was over I felt lucky enough to have escaped Azkaban to not take the further risk of revealing other details of my experience as a Death Eater. People were so sensitive about everything concerning him. I've imprisoned myself inside this house, able to care about nothing. I've willed myself to forget, to believe as everyone else did that he wouldn't rise again. But I _did_ know better and I couldn't lie to myself again and say I was right. Not after you started your treatment on me and I started to care again. It was like coming out of a daze. I realized I couldn't postpone the locket's destruction any more, nor could I trust anyone else with the task. I hoped I would heal enough to go on my own, but I haven't fully recovered yet."

His own willingness to wait so long disgusted Regulus. They had told him that his depression was among the most crippling side effects of the damage inflicted on his nervous system, but he had sworn he wouldn't hide behind his weaknesses any longer. For better or worse, he was done looking for excuses for himself.

"Dumbledore…he's always been certain the Dark Lord would return." It was the only sentence that passed the Potion Master's thin lips. His face had frozen; his gaze became so absent that it was a wonder someone indeed lived behind it.

Regulus wondered if Occlumency would help Severus Snape to deal with the horror of this new knowledge more than it had helped him, but then he hadn't mastered the art as well as Snape had.

So Dumbledore had known about what Tom Riddle had accomplished in his terrible madness.

"Has he never alluded to those Horcruxes to you?"

For a moment or two Severus seemed so absorbed by his inner contemplations that Regulus nearly gave up on receiving an answer, but then the other man seemed to come back himself at once and said a dry "No" before swallowing his drink. With the buzzing warmth induced by Firewhisky in his body, Severus allowed his mind to collect shards of things seen and heard over the previous years and finally coalesce them into a larger picture, which he intensely disliked.

The lightning-shaped scar on the forehead of the Boy-Who-Lived…could it be more than the mark of erratic sacrificial magic? The prophecy he had overhead once seemed to acquire a completely different, twisted meaning in light of his recent discovery. Had Potter Jr been assigned a kinder fate after all?

"Even if I can't do it alone, I will finish what I started this time around. I'll participate in whatever is decided to do about the locket."

Severus nodded numbly, forcing himself to temporarily put aside his suppositions, however intellectually intriguing they might be.

"Tell me more about the poison stored inside the basin."

* * *

Two hours later Severus was sitting in the Headmaster's office at Hogwarts, relaying all the knowledge Regulus had poured into him. Albus listened in apparent calm, his fingers caressing his long white beard with an irritating rhythm.

"You knew it all," the Slytherin accused at last, but the Headmaster just murmured tiredly, his untwinkling eyes closed.

"I suspected."

Because he hadn't expected the old strategist's confidence, Severus wasn't offended by his reticence. It didn't make it any easier to ask what he had to. "Do you suspect the Longbottom boy is another Horcrux?"

"It would explain some things. His grandmother writes to me that she has seen the boy hissing to a garden snake. Rather friendly."

"When did this occurr?"

"A year ago, more or less."

"Were you going to tell me?" Snape didn't like being kept in the dark, especially where the eventuality of that madman's return was concerned, and the lighthearted jibe that followed only furthered his aggravation.

"Why, Severus, I thought you wished not to be bothered with little Neville until you had to. If I'd known you felt responsible for him as well, I would have informed you."

_Damn those twinkles and that hideously satisfied twitch of his lips_.

But then the old man went on to more serious matters and the rest was quickly forgotten. "I'm more concerned about the diary than the locket. It won't be a simple matter to gain access to it."

"No," Severus sighed. "Lucius will be out of London next week. I think I'll be able to convince Narcissa to give it to me willingly." He didn't offer the reasoning behind his intended persuasion and Albus didn't press him, although for a moment it seemed as if he wanted to comment.

"Act as you believe it's right. I'll go with Regulus once the draught to counteract the poison is ready."

"You'll have it by the next waning moon."

* * *

"There will be warm and dry snowflakes falling from the ceiling of the Great Hall and suits of armour enchanted to sing carols. Twelve trees with the most strange, wonderful, glittering decorations you can imagine. You'll love Hogwarts when Yule comes," Lily said softly into her son's ear as she tucked him into his Infirmary bed after having sat with him to tell his goodnight fairy tale. Even if Severus had told her no results would be evident before the treatment progressed to include all the medications, she couldn't avoid seeking signs of some type of improvement. It was dangerous, because expectations could set her up for a greater disappointment, but some temptations were just too sweet to resist.

She combed his bushy black hair with loving fingers, pushing the most rebellious locks back from his forehead, and placed a kiss on his cheek. "Sweet dreams, Harry," she whispered, noticing with a glance at the clock that she was late for dinner. After tiptoeing out of the Hospital Wing, she quickened her pace on her way to the Great Hall and was surprised, upon turning the corner, to come face to face with Severus Snape.

Lily drew back and he mirrored her action, bringing a grin to her lips. "Severus! I didn't think I was that late!"

"For dinner? No, they've just begun." In truth, he didn't care much for company right now – too many thoughts, too much time spent pushing a certain Dark Lord out of his immediate thoughts. He felt as if someone had turned back the clock on him without warning.

"You aren't coming?"

"I have no appetite."

She could see something was off with him, but there was no way to pinpoint it with any precision. He looked distracted, yet it was more than that….

"Are you all right?"

"Fine. Will you excuse me?"

He departed before she had a chance to reply, taking off with long, unhurried strides. Lily looked after him, frowning and trying to remember whether she had done anything that might have unintentionally offended him. Then she shook her head, mocking her egocentrism: just because she knew so little of his private life didn't mean she should suppose his world revolved around her. They weren't so close that she could expect him to spill his secrets to her. Severus had always been a very private person. She hoped his concerns weren't grave.


	8. Chapter 7:Consolation

**Author's Note: In this chapter I mention the ****Wheel Of The****Year. ****In Paganism it's also known as the Eightfold Wheel and it is a spiritual division of the year which can be dated back to the first agricultural societies. It coexists with the wider seasonal divisions, incorporating eight solar festivals: Samhain, Yule, Imbolc, Litha, Ostara, Lammas, Mabon and Beltaine. Among those, Yule, the Winter Solstice, celebrates the annual rebirth of the Sun God from the Goddess Mother's womb, very much like Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus.**

**Chapter 7: Consolation**

Narcissa Malfoy's gardens were the part of the imposing manor with which she was most reasonably pleased: aside from the aisles of medicinal herbs and plants essential for basic potion-making, there was an amazing variety of pale coloured orchids, which posed a stark contrast to the few, but majestic and well placed, bushes of blue roses. Their centre housed a gazebo that sheltered a round crystal table, and the overall impression was one of artificial harmony, an imposed perfection which felt unnatural. It was there Narcissa was used to have tea with her private guests.

That evening she handed Severus a slice of bran and fig pie, which she knew to be his favourite, and an enigmatic half-smile fluttered on her lips while her manicured hands lifted a teapot, immaculate porcelain adorned with coppery runes, to pour ginger tea into two small cups.

Her hair, of a honey blonde so different from her husband's silvery mane, was held back with a small ring of entwining hawthorn twigs, in a manner that was fashionable lately among noble women. The symmetry of her features displayed a cool kind of beauty which people were more apt to appreciate in inanimate works of art than in another human being, but the occasional lovers she collected never seemed too put out by this, nor by her rarely passionate temperament, although to be sure the lady didn't keep them around long enough for such problems to arise. As for Lucius, Severus remembered that his sexual preferences leaned more toward teenage boys he could control than complacent wives distantly related to him, and this lack of interest (or his presumption?) prevented him from suspecting her as one would suppose he would.

The only thing that had ever sparked a desperate affection in her heart was her blood-kin, with particular reference to her sisters and her only son, Draco; but Narcissa was able to put them aside as well, if she was so inclined. She liked to cultivate her solitude, and the only means of independence she had was her ability to keep an emotional distance.

Death Eaters were a close-knit unit, bound together by beliefs and bloodlines but more strongly yet by the ceremonial magic they had shared, because every ritual, Dark or light, created bindings which went beyond the material realm. Severus took little satisfaction in participating in the social gatherings organized at each of the Wheel of the Year's turnings by those social circles whose acceptance had once been denied him. It was probably for her cautious, detached nature – similar to his own – that Severus drew enjoyment from Narcissa's company on those occasions, and it was because of that that he allowed her now to lead the conversation, indulging with good grace her need to deepen his knowledge about Draco's most recent explosions of wild magic and her intention to organize a private feast for the Winter Solstice.

"You will be present, naturally. I can't imagine you would miss having a laugh at Egram Ruthven's expense. It seems he came back to England with the intention of finding a spouse. Chances are he will find himself on Messaline's carnet before he can hear of her previous marriages."

Messaline Zabini had been Head Girl the year Severus was sorted – a strikingly beautiful Ravenclaw famous for being already engaged from the age of fifteen to a man who might have been her grandfather. Not many had been surprised that the old man had barely lived six months past their nuptial ceremony, but this certainly changed when her second husband, of a younger age and more consistent patrimony, went the same route. It was singularly amusing how her recent decision to reclaim her maiden name and impose it on her son had given rise to more rumours than her shady reputation. He would genuinely regret not witnessing the hassle her provocative presence usually caused – but not enough to miss one second of the upcoming festivities with Lily. She had always been very fond of Christmas time.

"A shame I will be forced to decline your invitation, then. I'm among the teachers designated to stay at Hogwarts for the whole break this year."

"Your absence will be noticed with sadness." Narcissa said it without irony or warmth. She would send an invitation all the same, as etiquette demanded, and he would write back the same excuses with identical motivation.

"I must confess this isn't simply a courtesy visit."

Narcissa tilted her head to one side, intrigued but not noticeably displeased or surprised. "It isn't?"

"I met Regulus Black recently." This seemed to shake her; her smile thinned as she averted her gaze from his and slowly placed her cup back on its plate.

"How is he? "

Her question sounded as if she was on the verge of faltering, and Severus understood she was ashamed of that weakness, because circumstances obliged her to show indifference toward her cousin as much as toward her sister Andromeda, who had committed the much greater offence of marrying a Muggleborn. It was her husband who had almost murdered Regulus.

Severus scoffed, pretending malice. "I suppose it came to your attention he was being cured at Hogwarts last summer."

Narcissa nodded; it was no wonder that she knew in spite of each other's situation in the past year which had seen Severus inside Malfoy Manor without the matter being mentioned or acknowledged in the slightest. Lucius was on the school's Board of Governors, which meant he had a privileged channel of information regarding the projects conducted inside Hogwarts, even the ones kept under wraps, which came to his ears eventually, even if sometimes significantly late.

"His health has greatly improved," Severus said in a thoroughly revolted and yet bored tone, as if he couldn't imagine a less proficient way to spend his time than talking about Sirius Black's younger brother, "but I found myself assisting him during an instance of delirium." He disregarded the curiosity flitting across the blonde woman's face; it wouldn't be wise to disclose too many details about Regulus' current condition independently of the unsoundness of the information he was intent on spreading.

"Why would he be raving?" There was once again a sense of guilt and helpless concern in her inquiry, a testament to her awareness that she wasn't supposed to care – a tool he could easily use against her to redirect the conversation into the path of his choice.

"As I've already said, he is hardly in mortal peril," he said as if it was the only part of the news that would hold any possible relevance to her. The briefest furrowing of her brows in response could have indicated flickering anger as well as frustration. "But you will find it far more interesting to know he had given out more than a few indications about a certain _diary_ Lucius received from the Dark Lord before his fall."

Narcissa blanched and instantly retreated behind a mask of ineffable vapidity. She entwined her fingers first over her lap and then under the table, her stance a just a touch straighter and stiffer. Her gaze was cast downwards for a short moment but when it met his anew, her mental barriers were up and steady. While they both knew Severus was capable enough of breaking through them, he couldn't do so without alerting her and so violating her hospitality. Nonetheless, her voice was candy-sweet and the curve of her lips unfazedly demure.

"I suppose it would be pointless to deny in the face of a wizard so expert in the mind arts."

"Quite."

If anyone had raved about potentially relevant novelties on his watch, he would have been a fool to not use Legilimency both to assure himself of their soundness and to learn more.

"Dumbledore knows nothing of it," he assured her, "but I think Lucius brought on your family more danger than he realized in agreeing to guard that artefact."

"When the Dark Lord favours you, personal risk is something one must accept."

With calculated swiftness, Severus grabbed her wrist, pinning her slender hand under his larger palm. The gesture startled Narcissa noticeably and she looked up at him with bewildered eyes, seemingly enraptured with the tumult she found reflected in his pale, gaunt visage.

"I should stay silent," he snarled in a low voice, maintaining a balance between struggling self-control, suppressed emotion, and a nuance of self-loathing, "but how can I, when I value your friendship so?" He felt the woman tense under his rough hold, and while silence stretched between them her full attention was on him.

"What is that diary?"

"From the little I was able to deduct, a Darkling."

Her pupils dilated with fear and horror, to which Severus could relate only too well. A Darkling was an extremely dangerous artefact of Necromancy. Its inner dynamics and forms could encompass an extraordinary variety, suiting the Necromancer's deeper inclinations, but it had only a single purpose: it had to look like an innocuous enough object to be camouflaged inside an adversary's house or living environment so it would absorb, day after day, the life force of local inhabitants until it evolved into an animate creature similar to an Inferius, which the wizard could use as a living reservoir of magical energy. It was a magical equivalent of a rechargeable battery, very appreciated in Dark rites.

"Lucius wouldn't –"

"He wouldn't have known."

"It's not possible. Why would he punish us so? This family has done nothing but serve him most faithfully," she muttered, but from the fine trembling of her fingers, Severus was sure she was on the verge of believing him.

"Our master was rightly exigent with his followers. Who can tell how Lucius could have failed to please him? And what could I possibly gain from lying to you, Narcissa?"

"You tell me, Severus. Why would you want something our lord entrusted to my husband?"

Her flaring defiance didn't impress him. He knew the basis for his lie was well-grounded: all he had to do was give her an excuse to _want_ to believe.

"Why should I bother to gain something which would cost me my life in the eventuality of our lord's return?" He caressed the back of her hand with his thumb, feeling her shiver in response. "You were always a good friend to me, Narcissa. Allow me to deserve your alliance."

* * *

Severus Snape had not ever stopped considering sexual intercourse as a rather debasing necessity. The belief had deep roots: as a child he had always been rather resentful of his parents for forcing him to take notice of their extracurricular activities. The walls of their modest habitation in Spinner's End had been too thin: when Tobias came back from the mill fatigued and irritable or completely inebriated from one of his foolhardy nights, it was nearly impossible to stay insensible to the undisguised, demanding forcefulness with which he dragged Eileen away from any activity in which she was already engaged (be it sleeping or cooking or sweeping the floor) to their bedroom. Severus had loathed her acceptance of that brutal treatment as much he had been unable to understand it. But after he was sorted into Slytherin it had been simple, so simple, to consider sex as only another means to an end and not mind about being used and abused until he could obtain something out of it.

It came as a surprise to learn that his disposition hadn't changed after the fall of Voldemort.

In the end, Narcissa gave him the Horcrux and took his hands after he had tucked it inside his robes, praying with him that it would be destroyed. He brought her hands to his lips, promising that she had no reason to fear for her family any more, and didn't protest when she pulled him wordlessly into her private chambers. It wasn't the first time Lady Malfoy had welcomed him in her bed – there had been a few similar, inconsequential occurrences over the years of their acquaintance – and Severus had resigned himself to not comprehending the preference Narcissa had accorded to him, but he had waved it off as an ulterior demonstration of the Black genetic appetite for inner and external ugliness. It would explain the unwavering Bellatrix's lust for the Dark Lord's inhuman physique, or the broadcast veneration of her cousin Sirius toward James Potter.

Sexual intercourse was a powerful, if temporary, mystical bond and it was easy to exploit in ways Narcissa hadn't the knowledge to imagine. His mind touched hers as constantly his hands did her naked flesh and her thoughts skimmed on a surface so clear that he could almost literally read them.

It was simple enough to taste her skin and move into her eyes without losing sight of his end goal, to plunge inside her memory while the heat of their bodies melted into one haze, pulling and tearing at it in places so very subtly that her suffering danced on the edge of her awareness…and then when it was over in a tangle of sweaty limbs and immaculate silken sheets, he rolled to her side, vaguely pleased with his ability to so completely disengage his body from his mind that he could carry on two activities so different with equal satisfaction, but slightly irked by the contrast his yellowish pallor posed to the glowing candour of the sheets. It made him look as if his skin was grimy.

He turned his face to confront two cerulean, lucid eyes and a swollen rosy mouth. He pulled at her memory again, willing his mind to tend the cord of an invisible arrow, dissolving her awareness of their most important object of discussion and of his fraud in a dusty mist.

"Oblivate," he whispered against her lips, fisting his hand in her blonde mane.

It was a spell so much smoother and more precise when guided by Legilimency.

* * *

It was intensely satisfying to listen to Tom Riddle's diary's high-pitched screams of agony while Albus Dumbledore pierced it through with Gryffindor's blade, showing a strength unexpected in a man of his age. Severus had avoided touching that abomination as much as possible, and the relief he had felt at handing it over to Dumbledore had been shamefully palpable. Severus' smirk fell when the Headmaster, contemplating the now empty pages, asked how Lucius Malfoy would deal with the disappearance of the object.

"Narcissa' s recollection of our encounter differs significantly from mine. I've blurred her memory of her late adventure with Regulus for safety as well. When Lucius eventually notices, there will be no way to trace it back to me."

Albus nodded, but the wrinkles on his ancient visage seemed to deepen. "If we are to give credit to Regulus Black's colouring of past events, it's likely Voldemort commanded others among his key enforcers to keep other Horcruxes in their custody."

"Do you think he has willingly made more than two?"

Even from an ex-Death Eater's world-weary perspective, the idea of anyone inflicting such a violation on himself was revolting.

"If his soul was so unstable as to splinter and attach itself partially to Neville the night the child was marked, he _must_ have made more than two or three."Seven or nine was the most likely number; thirteen would be been too much even for Tom Riddle's megalomaniac aims, and those were the numbers with the highest magical symbolism.

Severus tried unsuccessfully to swallow the bitterness that rose in his throat while Albus continued to fill the air with words he would prefer to never hear. "Regulus will ask Cornelius Fudge for a special pass to enter Bellatrix and Rodolphus Lestranges's vault at Gringotts, since Rabastan – their appointed heir – is in Azkaban, supposedly to recover a family heirloom his cousin took from him. Given our Minister's respect for old nobility, I imagine he will be forthcoming; but even so, it isn't to say we will find what we seek."

While the Ministry had, in theory, full authority on patrimonial propriety of those who received a life sentence to Azkaban, there were rare precedents of interference with the Goblins' administrative policies at the wizarding bank, which would keep the Ministry from claiming his goods until Rabastan was deceased or Kissed.

"Perhaps Felix Felicis could smooth over the process and render Regulus more _persuasive._"

"Probably, Severus, probably."

* * *

Severus spent the remainder of his day within Hogwarts' walls coping with a bizarre but inescapable feeling of alienation from those around him. It was evident to him – however ill-disposed he was to dwell on it – that while no Auror would obtain the diary using the means he had utilized, no Death Eater, reformed or not, would have taken on that task without coercion or a chance of personal gain.

While he wouldn't hesitate to consider himself a Dark wizard, it had became very apparent that he lingered, metaphorically speaking, in a no-man's-land. Narcissa had indeed demonstrated respect and a maternal kindness to him in his youth, inciting him to prove that the pure blood in his veins overpowered its taint, treating him like an equal in spite of her suspicions regarding his origins. Yet he hadn't hesitated to betray her acceptance and his appreciation of it by taking a conscious decision to endanger her, because there was still a war in motion and he had chosen the opposite side of the fence, in spite of his anything-but-moralistic motivations. He had set himself a goal at the very beginning; but the path toward that had changed him and he didn't know how much or when it had begun, and now his goals were different. There was no imperative to protect Lily any more, not like before, but somehow it made no difference. He had tasted freedom, and there was no turning back to being a slave. He was still a Death Eater, yet he wasn't.

"Your gloominess is scaring even Slytherins today." Lily slid onto the seat beside his at dinner, grinning as if she was in a playful mood.

"I try to stay in shape."

"You manage admirably well."

He glared at her half-resentfully, searching her expression for any traces of ill-meaning irony and finding none. Lily seemed either to not notice or to dismiss his reaction, filling her plate with an abundant portion of black pudding and attacking it with gusto.

"I take you had a good day."

"Charity and I took Harry for a long walk outside, almost to the edge of the Forest. We met Hagrid and went over to his hut for tea."

Severus had seen the two women going out of the castle, chatting as if they were old friends, each one grasping one hand of the child who stood between them. It was good that there was at least one other person of her age Lily could talk to besides him. In retrospect, he could see why it would cheer her up: she spent far too much time playing recluse with her brat inside the medical ward.

Her voice lowered as she leaned her head toward him. "He thought Harry was the cutest child he had ever seen."

It was a compliment she couldn't have heard often, and even if such a comment could only have come from a half-giant obsessed with all sorts of dangerous and sickening beasts, in seeing how it had moved her, Severus felt a glimmer of reluctant gratitude for the rough groundskeeper.

"Well," he felt bound to admit, stabbing his roasted duck a bit too forcefully with his fork, "he _does _have your eyes. It more than makes up for his appalling resemblance to his father."

He slanted her a glance, suddenly regretting having said what might pass for an insult, but Lily looked anything but offended. Her grin grew wider, as if his opinion had amused her, and she leaned over again, ruddy tresses spilling over her shoulders and contrasting so pleasantly with her black robes. "I promise I won't tell anyone you said that. It would _so_ ruin your reputation."

Seeing that impish expression on her face again after so long, directed at _him_, caused something in his chest to shake and break free – like an echo of the girl she had been, calling back a fragment of him which was supposed to have died and decomposed. It was that fragment that responded to her humour in kind, with a voice that to his ears sounded most unlike his own. "Nobody would believe you anyway."

It must have been just the right thing to say, for once, because Lily gave a snort of laughter that seemingly lit her up from within. Severus felt disoriented, as if at the same time he couldn't breath and yet too much oxygen had rushed to his brain.

It wasn't a completely undesirable sensation.


	9. Chapter 8:Yule

**THIS SPIRAL DANCE**

Author: Sky Samuelle

Summary: Voldemort chooses Neville, James& Lily live , but Severus Snape still finds himself on a quest for absolution. 

**Chapter 8: Yule**

_Dear Regulus, _

_I can't allow you to spend the Winter Solstice all by yourself. I confess I had indulged in the fantasy of inviting you to the party my family organizes like every other year. My mother is always ranting at me for not having ever brought a guest, and I would be obliged to you if you gave me a chance to shut her up once and for all. All that had stopped me from inviting you earlier was the fact that I don't really know how you feel about Muggles. When you told me of how much you regretted the past, I had assumed, maybe with naivete, that you had abandoned certain prejudices altogether. I notice now I could even be wrong. If so, my invitation is inopportune because you know my mother isn't a witch, and many of my relatives who will be there are from her side of the family. I apologize if I come across as uncouth, because I only mean be honest. Please, consider the possibility of joining us for Yule if it doesn't make you uncomfortable. _

_Love,_

_Charity_

Regulus folded the missive and put it aside, chewing on his bottom lip and staring sullenly at the quill in his hand as if he could will it to write an adequate reply by itself. He had no idea how he could refuse Charity's invitation without causing an irreparable break in their friendship. He knew well how close she was with her parents, because the enthusiasm with which she had fleetingly described them to him in a previous conversation was been difficult to miss or forget. Her father was a pureblood wizard who, like many others before him, had been forced to infiltrate the Muggle world to pursue an artistic career as theatre actor, while her mother was a Muggle ballerina he had hopelessly fallen in love with along the way. From what Regulus had heard, it seemed the pair conducted a bohemian lifestyle - which Charity clearly so admired - in London.

So if he snubbed her family's company for the upcoming festivities, regardless of how many pretty words he used to deny his past ideals, Charity would just think he was playing the Slytherin to hide the fact that he considered her mother's race inferior. Which wasn't … _completely_ untrue, because while he no longer considered Muggle-hunting and ethnical cleansing as more than the senseless butchery they were, it wasn't saying he thought Muggles were equals to the magical folk. He hadn't the experience to say where the difference between the two races ended and the likeness began and he had the feeling that any conclusion he would be able to reach would equally disquiet him.

Yet he knew the only way he would ever stop looking back was by looking ahead.

Regulus tried to picture himself surrounded by Muggles, eating between Muggles, talking to Muggles. In spite of himself, he was bit curious about them - were they as intelligent as wizards and witches? How did they conceive a world without magic? How would they interact with the Sophocles Burbage side of family?

There was the fact that Plato Pomfrey, Charity's uncle, was deceased during the War, killed by some Death Eater while he tried to bring his Healer's expertise to an Auror camp, so it was unlikely that Poppy Pomfrey's brother would have liked him better than the mediwitch did.

Still, Regulus had promised himself that he had done with running and hiding, and this was the ideal instance to prove the trueness of his resolutions. He couldn't digest the supposition that Charity would despise him if he disappointed her expectations. He wouldn't insult her generosity so, even if he had brave hordes of Muggles and frowning parents to avoid.

_Morgana, I'm going to feast at Yule among Muggles and magical folk alike…_

_

* * *

_The Winter Solstice came by before Lily fully realized it, although she enjoyed anticipating it with an enthusiasm she hadn't felt from perhaps her childhood. James and Sirius sent a Christmas card and a stuffed puppy for Harry, charmed to change its colour every time it was touched. The gift, however it reassured her that they hadn't forgotten about their son and godson in this time of celebration, angered her as well. From what they had explained to her before accepting this mission, any violation of their cover might be dangerous for both their assignment and their well-being - so why were they risking it so imprudently? She knew she could trust that they were brilliant enough to hide their tracks, but it didn't ease her worry. Taken singularly, Sirius and James were perfectly capable of acting like sensible adults, if they so chose. But when they were together… it brought out _both_ their best and their worst sides, reviving a certain reckless Marauder-iness which disquieted her a little. 

She was determined to not dwell over them long enough to ruin her good mood; there was something unique and miraculous in being a spectator to the Hogwarts festivities. Christian and pagan decorations representing glass angels and snow fairies mingled joyously and the singing armours sang both Solstice chants and Christian carols, underlining how simple it was within those walls at least - the coexistence of two religions so different, whose seasonal celebration shared some customs like gifts, decorating trees, carolling. It seemed only bloodlines and House rivalry could create real divisions within both the wizarding world and Hogwarts.

Although the wizarding world had pagan foundations and the vast majority of ancient families remained faithful to the Ancient Religion, half-bloods and Muggleborns had introduced Christianity somewhere along the line. There were exceptions - pureblooded families like Potters and Malfoys had converted to Christianity many generations ago. It struck Lily as befitting, the way religious faith had truly nothing to do with political alignments and life choice. For Lily, learning about magic hadn't ever been truly distinct from learning the Old Religion – Eileen had initiated Severus into her faith and he had always taken for granted that being a witch or a wizard had to mean being pagan as well, passing that belief onto her. As an intrigued little girl, Lily hadn't considered it an imposition, but rather a new look to the different facets of Divinity. Although, she hadn't cared to report to her parents _everything_ Severus taught her about wizarding culture.

This year, not more than twenty students had stayed at the castle for holidays, but the quieter atmosphere made the school more 'homely' to her, entitling her to roam along the dungeons more freely.

"Merry Yule," she said to Severus as he stood aside to allow her to enter his study.

"Merry Yule to you, too." He half-glared at the rectangular package in her hands. Evidently, he was still hung on over the commotion of the morning. Minerva had told her at breakfast of it: some students had thought it was funny to leave, as a gift, a bottle of shampoo enchanted to sing some stupid rhyme until it was unwrapped before the Potions Master's study door. Assumedly, it was the hard work of seventh or sixth years not too pleased with the Head of Slytherin House's acerbic grading. Lily didn't know whether she should have to be more sorry for the suspected students who would, guilty or not, pay for this prank for whole the rest of their school year, or for Severus, who would doubtlessly taken the accident to mean more than it was. He was just twenty-four after all, and he intimidated his students like a man of twice his age and experience. While not justified, a little rebellion and defiance were to be anticipated.

"I've heard you were a really, really good boy this year and since you are too old for Santa Claus, I guessed it was my job to reward you."

His thin lips twitched like he was fighting a smile, but he looked so enthralled with the present she had handed him that his eyes roamed over it as if to visually dissect it. It was wrapped with silver strings and a musky green paper whose background abounded of animated, fuming little cauldrons.

"I think you are supposed to open it, you know," she babbled before he had a chance to comment. So, maybe she had overdone it a little, but it was only because she _loved_ shopping for gifts and this year her list was way too short. How was she supposed to know where they stood with each other, anyway? She liked to think they were, if not friends, at least close, to gain back a part of the understanding they had as kids.

"Must I? It looks diverting enough this way." But he did unwrap the present with a carefulness which indicated he appreciated her gift. "The Count of Monte Cristo." He read the title out loud, slowly, turning the book in his hands.

"You can not remember it, but I had borrowed mine to you a long time ago, and I remember you had enjoyed it. Maybe you'll appreciate the ending more this time around."

"I think I will. Thank you." He remembered, naturally, how much his younger self had loved it and overall how much he had regretted the impossibility of buying a copy for himself, with his father breathing on his neck for every misspent penny. It was surprising and touching to see she had remembered such a meaningless episode. To reason on it, the book had turned rather prophetic for his fate.

"I have a gift for you as well." He had bought it in spite of the unshakable certainty he wouldn't summon up the nerve to offer it to her, unless he was inspired to find a passable excuse, but Lily's look of bewildered enthusiasm was worth of any loss of caution.

"You got me something?"

"Yes, I _did,_" he echoed her, his bemusement at her reaction so evident that it embarrassed her a little. Severus placed the unwrapped packet on the desk, at a prudent distance from a few vials and opened a drawer to remove a sachet of burgundy velvet, tied by golden chords.

_Gryffindor colours_, Lily realized incredulously once the little gift was in her palm. They had had a similar idea.

She undid the ribbon and the sachet swirled open, revealing… almond-sized, oblong seeds of a shiny vermillion colour. She hadn't seen anything similar before. "What are they going to grow?"

"Elysian Blossoms."

_Wow_. "Those are – rare."

As a matter of fact, they were difficult to acquire outside the black market in Knockturn Alley. Their petals were used for many beauty philtres and - most importantly - incenses to direct and shape nocturnal dreams. Their plant resembled a purplish-leaved hedge producing dark violet flowers which opened only by night.

"They are part of a batch I had ordered for myself. If you feel too guilty to accept them, I can keep yours as well. I will put them to good use."

"Absolutely not." Lily smirked. "Just wait until I find a new home and those will be the first addition to my garden. Is it true their nectar smells differently to different people according to what attracts them? Like Amortentia?"

"Even though the Elysian Blossoms' nectar is a minor ingredient, it has the main influence in determining the potion's scent. The flower's one is less pronounced." Severus paused, not sure if he wanted to continue. "Are you leaving Godric's Hollow?"

Lily shrugged, pushing a rebel dark red tendril behind her ear self-consciously. "It doesn't feel right living there now James and I parted ways. It's not like it makes any difference to Harry."

"I admit I didn't think your separation was so _permanent_."

"It is," Lily remarked with a practical tone which reassured Severus considerably. "James had left before accepting that assignment abroad. We have just to wait for one whole year of legal separation before the annulment of our vows becomes legal."

Experience had illustrated to her in rich colours it wasn't a good idea lingering too long on the James Potter subject around Severus Snape. Her eagerness to turn the conversation away from it had Lily's gaze wandering around the office and focusing on the vials and jars lined over his desk, containing heterogeneous ingredients. "Were you preparing to brew something?"

"Tonight." He nodded, gesturing as if it was long time away - but some of them had been stewed beforehand.

At a closer observation, she recognized some of them: scorpion's legs, blood of dragon, absinthe…acromantula venom?

"Are you making a poison?"

"Yes, I'm secretly planning a slow agony for an handful of Gryffindors with a disputable poetic talent."

Lily raised her eyebrows at his flat seriousness, which elicited from her an allusively sweet quip.

"Now, Professor, I wouldn't be so nosy as to inquire about your reasons to use it. My interest is purely academic. "

He waved away her flippancy with a somewhat resigned sigh, as if it had already tired him out. "It will be an Inerthius Draught."

"Do you mind if I help? It's been quite a while since I participated in any potion-making of this level of difficulty. I confess I'm a bit curious about this one in particular."

"If you are awake by then, I shall begin by midnight."

There was a peculiar magical power associated with crossroads and intersection points, both temporal and spatial; to be reminded of it, Lily became aware of the tingle of a forgotten kind of excitement. Potions brewing was an intuitive science dangerously close to art, and you had to love it to excel at it; she was sorry that circumstances had prevented her from finding out how proficient she would become.

"Crazed ghouls couldn't keep me away, even if I wasn't already insomniac."

Severus gave another of his inscrutable looks and eventually shrugged carelessly. "All right."

Later, when Lily was gone and he was sitting behind his desk, the Slytherin Head of House folded slowly the paper which had been used to pack Lily's gift and accurately inserted it among the book's pages. Caressing the cover with reluctant fondness, he struggled to come to terms with the strangeness of this Yule. Even the Headmaster had fallen a victim to the festive spirit and vivaciously insisted to stick to him a paid subscription to Potions Weekly.

_Truly, Severus, it's my responsibility to ensure my professors are properly informed._

How was he supposed to properly refuse Albus after _that_ hinted insult?

Regulus Black had felt authorized to owl him a bottle of a seasoned spiced prune mead, accompanied by a justificatory card: _'I thought it was in my best interests ensuring you were equipped to bear the incapacity of your students for at least another year.' _

It wasn't as if Severus was used to letting Yule pass unobserved: ex-Death Eaters cultivated their acquaintances for the convenience's sake and it had never appealed to his imaginary sentimental side. Nor should it have.

Yet the most precious present he had received this year was knowing Potter wouldn't be quite the fundamental figure in the Lily's life anymore.


	10. Chapter 9: Changes

**Chapter 9: Changes **

The golden doors of the locket swung wide open with a click, exposing the living, lucid eye behind each of the glass windows. Regulus felt his mouth going dry and sour, his tongue glued to his palate as if it had grown number and larger. Dumbledore's presence behind him didn't diminish the impact of that sight. He had tried picturing this final moment over many countless, restless nights but the reality didn't even come close.

Regulus tightened his hold on the consecrated athame– the one he had just used to break the locket open – feeling it was about to slide out of his hand. He had never perceived more clearly that every step he had taken in his life had brought him here, to destroy one of the most perverted artefacts magic could create in the darkness of this cave, alongside the Hogwarts Headmaster.

So, this was what a Horcrux looked like.

Nothing was happening, but Regulus' heart beat faster, overcame by an elusive sense of foreboding. Those greenish eyes, so unnaturally aware of their surroundings, attracted him in spite of himself. For the longest minute, he wondered if the poison he had drank was beginning to have its effect, but then he remembered it was impossible: Severus had prepared for him a potion, another poison which, while couldn't completely nullify the first one, would largely diminish its effects and delay them for several hours. It wasn't an enthralling prospect, but at least there was the guarantee nothing would interfere with the therapy he was still undergoing: the experimental cure which had mostly healed him from the magical and physical paralysis that had affected him on that terrible day – the day he had come close to being delivered to death's cold embrace.

Being back in this place gave him goosebumps.

There was a hiss – the Horcrux was reacting finally, and Regulus was no longer able to think, to do anything but listen to that sound, rattling yet hypnotic, articulating itself slowly to form sensed words: "I've seen your heart, Regulus Arcturus Black, and it's mine."

A hand painfully squeezed his shoulder, a voice admonished him, very close to his ear, and Regulus was only barely aware of whom it was. He should be able to recognize it, the same way he should be able to listen its advice, but it was very difficult make a sense of anything but the Horcrux's mocking insults.

"You are a murderer. What good could you ever do to the wizarding world, other than paying homage to it with your death? You never knew quite what to do with your life. You hardly questioned anything, did you? You let others rule your mind all your life until it was too late… Would your mother have still accepted you back if your brother hadn't been a bitter disappointment? You were lucky to be the last one left. The mere stress of seeing you so crippled and useless because of your betrayal is likely to have killed her."

Regulus called forth his Occlumency training, and shut that revolting voice out of his mind. When his defenses were in firmly place, a task which required more than a little effort, he was relieved to observe how it felt like he was hearing Riddle's threats from far away.

"Coward. Murderer. Hypocrite. A failure to your family, to your brother…" the Horcrux insisted, but Regulus sensed all the power it had on him it was the power he would willingly hand it. So he focused on the pressure of Dumbledore's grip on his shoulder and deafened himself to the echo of his fears; instead he turned to Dumbledore, silently asking him what he was to do.

"Immobilize it upon that rock," Dumbledore commanded, unwavering, as if the scene hadn't brought him to doubt Regulus' resolution as much Regulus had just doubted himself.

Regulus laid the locket open on the rock a few feet ahead and rose his wand over it, waving it in a mute Petrificus Totalus. He had to concentrate hard on keeping the energy flowing from his arm to the rebelling object, deaf once again to the vile insults it shouted, but with heaviness in his heart that made him wish he could bend and cry here and now. He felt his palm burning up and his arm hurt but Regulus resisted, channelled more energy into the spell as Albus Dumbledore stabbed the first eye.

His heart almost plummeted through his ribcage and for a few seconds, Regulus guessed he was about to have a seizure… but then whatever dark magic had him under its claws ceased to be and he was breathless, sprawled gracelessly on the ground but healthy.

He saw Gryffindor's sword still penetrating the second eye and understood it was over, finally. The Horcrux had died, if what did could be called living. He had indeed managed to distract and keep frozen the Horcrux to allow Dumbledore to destroy it, like they had agreed.

"A fine work," Dumbledore commended, helping him up.

"Yeah." Regulus smirked, accepting back his cane, which had fallen on ground sometime along this venture. For the first time in too long, he didn't feel like an invalid but… gratified.

Proud of himself.

That evening, the poison Regulus had downed. began its effect. It began with an innocuous vertigo, while he played Wizard's Scrabble with Kreacher. It was more as if he were trying to teach the elf how to play than an actual game: a pathetic hobby, even to him, but he needed to be distracted and have someone around to succour him when he would begin to feel sick. He was overall regretting that he couldn't share his newfound sense of accomplishment with anybody. The only person left who would have interest in his successes was Charity, but he could hardly reveal all that he had done today to her.

Regulus didn't recognize the vertigo for what it was until he realized that Kreacher's large eyes were scrutinizing him rather than the chess board.

"My master Regulus isn't all right," the elf stated uselessly and Regulus realized a sheen of cold sweat was beading his forehead. He grabbed his cane, but it almost slid out of his grasp before Kreacher steadied him from behind. Brief flashes of memories – anything but happy – ran through his mind.

"It's beginning, Kreacher. Remember what I have told you?"

The elf nodded, looking displeased, and Regulus repeated nonetheless, to squash the laughable tide of rising gratitude that someone was so concerned for him at last: "Severus Snape could pass by later. You are to let him in and bring him to my room."

Hours later, Regulus was barely conscious, twisting in his bed and plagued by too realistic visions of blood. Blood was everywhere – on his shoes, on his robes – and he tried scrubbing his skin clean by rubbing on his sheets, but they smelled the same iron stench of that bodily liquid. Somewhere inside him, Regulus knew those visions weren't real, unlike the icy, humid rolls Kreacher placed on his forehead with his wrinkly, roughened fingers, but there were moments when he sensed the weight of a corpse in his arms and looked down to see Charity's blankly beautiful face – certain he had killed her. He knew then it was just luck it hadn't happened for real: it made him wish earth could open and bury him alive for centuries.

When a chalky white visage loomed over him, he didn't know whether it was a product of his fever or reality. He lunged toward the spectral figure anyway, and his hand ended up grasping something soft, the texture of wool.

"Forgive me," he mouthed voicelessly before passing out.

Severus Snape wasn't a wizard who looked favourably on remorse. Among human emotions, it was the most useless: it was an unproductive distraction which prompted you to look back, stopping you from moving forward when you should . Regret was different: it taught you a lesson. But remorse? It would eat you again and again until nothing but a shell was left. So he had never asked for anyone's forgiveness and nobody had ever asked forgiveness of him. Until last night.

It was a small consolation knowing the youngest Black would probably remember nothing of his disgraceful onslaught of sentimentality in the morning. It had been only the Headmaster's insistence which had propelled Severus to check on Regulus the previous night – the Potions Master's plans had only included a quick visit to Grimmauld Place, to see enough to be able to report to Albus nothing was going awry. Then that idiot went to grab his sleeve, his white lips forming those purposeless words Severus had never had directed to him before and it had been strangely, for few stale minutes, like looking into a mirror.

That impression had pinned him there, sitting beside a feverish caricature of man, until his delirious mutterings had quieted and his shaky movements had ceased, doing nothing but staring at Kreacher agitating over his master, trying to recapture the spark of that fleeting emotion he had felt when clouded grey eyes had bored into his. To analyze it, to rationalize it.

A few hours and Regulus' skin had lost that sickly glow, but Severus remained unable to articulate himself. So he had left, wondering why he had stayed in first place.

Nobody had ever asked for forgiveness of him and he hadn't what it took to lay the past at rest. If Regulus was even conscious enough to mean what he had said, the idiot had chosen the wrong recipient.

Of all people, Severus would be the first to recognize his wretched father had proved himself more significant in death than in life: Tobias could not be openly violent unless he was drunk, regardless of his transparent spite for his wife and son, who he blamed for every real or imaginary failure of his and now he was an adult, Severus could consider with neater rationality his childhood, the resentment his parents – both of them – had held onto, but it didn't mean his opinion of the deceased man had modified.

Shocking a Black out of his belief system was doubtlessly the major accomplishment of a mediocre existence, which was poetic justice for a man who had destroyed his life and his family out of hate and fear of magic. In the morning, the Slytherin Head of House watched indolently on Poppy's visit of Harry and when the mediwitch became distracted by two Ravenclaw prefects streaming into the medical wing while supporting a younger girl with a greenish complexion, and Lily left the room to help the Healer, he stepped in to apply the ointment on the child. It occurred to him that the child in the question was more a product of his malice than of the James Potter's blood: in some twisted ways Harry was the son Lily would have never given him.

The mocking thought designed on his mouth a faint, embittered curve which could have resembled a smirk. He massaged the young Potter's shoulders, trying to evaluate whether most of the medicament had been absorbed by the skin and he could hence stopping his ministrations, when he felt muscles flexing under his fingertips and then he was suddenly looking down into a pair of erringly familiar eyes. At least so far, Lily's boy had shown no more decisional and intellective capacity than a rag doll, but now had turned his neck back to look at him, in absence of a stimulus which could have triggered that response on an instinctual level. Severus blinked, holding the gaze: inside those green irises he couldn't find a definite expressivity, but as he tentatively Legilimized the kid, he sensed a superficial awareness veiling the blank slate he expected. A progress?

Lily's return in the room ended his suppositions. "I've finished here," he explained with a brusque nod. Instantly, he decided it would be unwise telling her anything. He would have not fed an eager expectancy over what could be been only a fluke. Time would give him the answers he sought; in the meantime, he would observe more closely.

During the following days, Severus struggled to watch out for possible indicators of change in the condition of Harry Potter. He went so far as to trick Lily into suggesting a chess game after dinner – which became quite a frequent occurrence, considering how her refusal to accept _his_ superiority prompted her to require rematches – encouraging her to bring her son with her into his private quarters, but no peculiar episode presented itself to his attention, nor to Lily's motherly surveillance.

It was the first week of January when everything changed. It had snowed all the previous night and Lily, already insomniac for a long time, had slid out of her bed around 2.00 AM to stand looking the landscape out of her window. It was an enchanting sight, because trees and grounds covered by a heavy blanket of snow seemed to glow with an azure-ish halo during nighttimes. Muffled rumours had her turning away from that beautiful sight to allow her eyes to search for their source in the darkness. Lately, she managed to convince Poppy to let Harry sleep in her room, rather the medical wing. She had noticed that he moved more often in sleep than when he was younger, but both Severus and Poppy were more inclined to consider it was due to his growth rather the anything else.

"Mha!" The sound startled her, and her heart caught in her throat before she localized its source. It wasn't possible she had actually heard a human voice. Maybe a house elf?

"Lumos," she murmured, pinching the wick of a candle on her bedside and warm, tenuous light flowed from her fingertips to light the room.

"MH-MH-MH!"

Biting her tongue, so hard that it hurt, she half-swayed toward Harry's bed: her little boy stood there, sitting upright rather than simply leaning on the cushion, and his arm was… stretched forward. Toward her.

"MHH-MH-MHU. MHU! MHU-MHUM!"

And Lily went to him and took his little face between her hands, her palm exploring the soft lines of his visage as if she was blind, desperate to prove this wasn't a dream, because if it was, she wouldn't survive it.

"Mum is here, Harry," she choked, hugging him to her chest, utterly unaware of the wetness on her cheeks.

When a dozen of resonating tinkling bells roused him from his light sleep, Severus was fully prepared to either face another of Albus' untimely requests or to confront properly any Slytherin who had dared to cause such a disturbance to require his direct intervention. He hoped it was the latter, because relieving himself from the unavoidable frustration would be been more immediate, direct and enjoyable. What the Potions Master couldn't have anticipated, instead, was being confronted – the exact moment he opened the door of his private rooms – with an excited red-head, who flung herself onto him, slipping her arm around his neck.

He stiffened instinctively at the impact and shook off the initial shock to realize he was being _hugged _by a muttering Lily, who held her other arm around her son, whose darker head was uncomfortably pressed against his chest. Snape forced himself to try and make sense out of the words which rushed out of her mouth. It was really not simple task, because, well – _she was hugging him!?_ Why on earth…?

The woman in question seemed oblivious to his bafflement, and kept on with her murmured rambling. Only when she finally drew back, looking at him with limpid eyes and a beaming expression which left him incoherent for few precious seconds, he recovered his capacity to understand the English language.

"He called me mum! Do you see, Sev, you did it for real! Harry called for me, as if he had recognized me in the dark and he –"

"Perhaps it's better if you come inside, and explain to me everything from the beginning." He stood aside, unable to concede any attention to his young patient – even if he suspected strongly it should have to be his priority – because it was so much more enjoyable to focus on Lily, looking ecstatic as he had never seen her. Because of him?

"Err. Right," she blubbered, securing Harry against her breast and following him inside. It wasn't the first time she came here, yet to Lily the main room looked more discreetly beautiful and more homely than ever, from the numerous shelves well-furnished with thick leather-covered volumes and colourfully filled phials to the four silent paintings representing the Elemental Goddesses. Severus lit the fireplace and she sat on one of the two green armchairs in front of it, placing Harry down on the floor as Severus took the other.

She breathed in deeply and told him everything, recalling as many details and first impressions she was able to and he listened to her with great attention, although he didn't appear anywhere as enthusiast as she felt. It did nothing to diminish her happiness.

"So, how do you think it will happen from now on? I mean, must I expect little changes like this one or it will happen all at once, with him getting up on his own and doing things –"

"Lily, I truly didn't expect this. It isn't congruous with the diagnosis."

Stubbornly, the witch shook her head, not seeing why he was so serious but without really wanting to. "Were you listening me? My son has spoken today for the first time, actively recognizing me for the first time. Yet you speak like it wasn't a good thing!"

"It _is_ a good thing!" he asserted with a firmer, louder voice. "I don't deny this." She nodded her assent, looking calmer and pacified by his confirmation, although she was sitting up straighter and her chin lifted a bit determinedly, so he felt free to continue.

"Reason over it, Lily: however you can dislike hearing it, your Harry was basically close to a vegetable until a short while ago. Forgive my frankness," he added hastily when he saw opening her mouth to debate, "but he didn't speak or look possessing interest or capacity to interact with the outside world. He is unable to perceive when he needs urinating or eating. His sense of conservation is so lacking than if he was left with a dragon, he might allow the beast to eat him without noticing. It was assumed such a damage it was caused by the repeated Cruciatus and at least one other curse –"

"Flameo," Lily impatiently added, bothered in spite of herself by his bluntness. Healers had never been certain of the nature of the other curse, since the caster was dead and neither James nor Sirius had heard or witnessed Bellatrix uttering anything else but Cruciatus.

"But it was never confirmed, because the only other person present in the room was you and you were unconscious. Yet, if those Healers were right on all the accounts, it was more likely Harry would begin showing a more physical approach to his surroundings, rather than a more precocious response on a mental level. To be concrete, he should have to have learned to act before he learned to talk."

"He _has_ reached for me."

"Regardless of how touching that is, he should have to be able to do without a napkin before demonstrating practical intelligence and verbal articulation. Certified studies –"

"Neither muggle medicine nor healing is an exact science. Maybe Harry is an aberrant case."

"I don't think so. I had seen him reacting to me once, turning to observe me, but this only reinforces my point. Random episodes of lucidity don't substitute a gradual neurological progress. Look at him now – he looks hardly improved. You say he shows agitation during sleep, but we don't even know what it does mean."

They stared at each other stubbornly and Lily was the first to backtrack, feeling suddenly unable to recall why this had became a competition. Leaning back with huff, she pushed back her red hair behind her ears and asked, "So what is your theory?"

"I doubt Bellatrix had casted Flameo that night. Henceforth part of the equation will keep escaping us until we figure out what had really happened. Your son may seem better now, but this cure might stop benefiting him in the long haul or will, in the best among the hypotheses, give Harry moments of normality interspersed with long parenthesis of catatonia. The treatment needs to be balanced to give us stable results and the answer lies in finding that missing link."

Lily let her gaze linger on Harry, who sat crouched before the fireplace, seemingly deaf to the discussion happening over his tousled head and maybe interested in the entwining flames. She couldn't deny Severus talking sense: maybe her little miracle was already waning, like a mirage in the desert to a thirsty woman. It was bizarre how certain she was at the moment, that the stinging disappointment she was experiencing wouldn't grow to shadow the joy she had so recently tasted, nor would it diminish her faith. Of course, she was sad that the Harry's recovery was far more than it could have been, but she also had a deeply rooted hope that this was just the beginning of a quest they would eventually win. The beacon of hope which had tempted tonight was more than she had had in years.

"How we do it then? How do we find the truth?"

The firmness in her voice surprised her. It was like she was once again – in spite of his brutal honesty – trusting that this man knew just what it was right to do and how to do it.

He didn't disappoint her.

"It's just fortunate," he began, his black eyes gleaming promisingly, "that the human brain withholds far more information than we are capable to register consciously. Even when we are sleeping or in altered states of consciousness."


	11. Chapter 10: A Meeting Of Minds

**Chapter 10 : A Meeting Of Minds**

The plan was simple: Lily was supposed to take each morning for a week three sips of an elixir meant to awaken lost memories. The drinking of the elixir resulted in the irksome collateral effect of a continuous sense of déjà vu and a dream pattern embroiled in previously forgotten episodes of her past – some idle and harmless, like the place where she used to keep things she had lost; some not so much, like the scent of her mother's favourite perfume or the song Petunia used to sing when they were very young – while Harry continued his treatment unvaried. In that time, the Severus Snape hypothesis seemed to find confirmation in fact: her son showed random moments of lucidity when he was able to do normal things for a child of his age, like calling for his mother or eating on his own without being spoon-fed, indicating objects he wanted to see closer, running around a tree to scare squirrels away … but eventually, without premonitory signs, he spaced out and went back to his apparent oblivion. Lily treasured all the same each one of those temporary miracles, although she had hoped evidence would have proved Severus wrong, rendering their situation simpler. It was a small consolation to state that the Potions Master looked no less sure of their future course of action. The redhead's current preparation was all functional to their next experiment.

Lily had studied Mind Arts with a discretely proficient interest during her hiding in Godric's Hollow – when He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Nominated hunts your family down, and you know he happens to be a brilliant Legilimens, teaching yourself some Occlumency makes you, if not anything else, feel a bit safer and less likely to grow insane. Her natural tendency to detach from painful or uncomfortable emotions might have helped her to gain ground but she hadn't really had the time to acquire much practical experience. Still, that mental training had come in handy when she was been forced to close her depression in a box and channel her energies into taking care of her damaged child after that unfortunate Halloween, so she liked to think she was a decent Occlumens.

But today… today she would put that aside and allow a master Legilimens inside her mind. The concept made her uneasy – it felt somehow like a wrong, unnatural thing to do – and she tried to distract herself from what was to come by analyzing each and every detail of a portrait in Severus' private quarters. The Head of Slytherin sitting room was rather Spartan, but spacious and with a simple elegance which she had often appreciated whenever he had let her to invite herself in for a chess match. How could he content himself with the dusty modesty of his family house in Spinner's End after spending the majority of the year in such a comfortable environment? Maybe he lived there in Eileen's memory – Lily had not worked up the courage of asking what had become of her, but it seemed likely to suppose she had died sometime during the war, since no wizarding newspaper had reported her mortuary.

The painting the red-head was currently observing was one she particularly liked: a gate entwined with ivy and night-blooming jasmine, illuminated only by the cool moon's rays so that it was barely visible in the dark of the night, beyond which it was revealed a vast forest, large rocks covered with lichen. Robed in living foliage, vines and branches wreathing her head, a magnificent-looking woman stood aside, like if to offer silent guidance, with dark brown skin and luminous jade eyes a horn on her head, squirrels and marmots walking at her feet and running between her legs. The small, vivacious mammals were, along the rustling tree branches, the only part of the portrait which moved, because the woman was VerAvna, personification of the divine essence of the Earth Element.

"I apologize for keeping you waiting. We can proceed now. "

Severus Snape stood behind her, unusually proper as he walked toward the fireplace and stoked the fire to new life. She moved to reach his side.

"How do we begin?"

"You can sit there –" Severus gruffly ordered, gesturing to the chair before the fireplace "– and ground yourself. The rest will come simply enough if you try pose the least resistance you are capable of. It will be instinctive to oppose my invasion at first, but I won't be attacking you or wringing memories from you. As soon you let me in, we will move throughout your mind at the same pace. My aim will be to reach deep enough into your subconscious to find those sounds and impressions your brain has registered while you were unconscious, the night of Halloween 1981 . It's very important you stay calm during the procedure and trust me. I will leave to you the full control to direct our exploration, so I won't see anything you aren't aware of or adverse to, but if you begin struggling when we are descending into depth, it would be agony. "

He would have benefited from a subscription on a how-to-be-encouraging course, but Lily refrained from commenting about it. Irony wouldn't put either of them at better ease. So she did as he had said and leaned back on her chair, breathing slow and deep until she became conscious of the air as it flowed in and out of her lungs, of the blood flowing through her veins, of the electric spark within each nerve as impulses skipped from synapse to synapse . All the time, her eyes were on the flames in the fireplace, blurred in a haze of red and orange entwining embers.

Fingers lifted her chin up and suddenly she was staring into two black empty eyes. Lily willed her rising heartbeat to slow down as a new, refreshing sensation slurred around the edges of her awareness, like a cool tide gently knocking on the door of her thoughts. She became acquainted with that familiar _otherness _pulling at her, learning to perceive it more distinctly. His mental walls were forged in murmuring, clear waters; powerful, deep undercurrents so cold than they brushed her tentatively probing mind in an icy caress. Her barriers were made of shadows – of a night so black than it became unfathomable, a silence so deep to be palpable.

It wasn't easy, but Lily 's opposition caved in and they allowed their barricades to dissolve completely simultaneously; their minds rushed inside each other within the same breath.

As wide rivers slipped through her black skies, she sensed their mutual surprise at how well those two images fitted against each other. Waves of controlled power lulled her and then Lily melted into the water that surrounded her, somehow certain that she wouldn't drown: suddenly Severus was _everywhere _– in and out of her, she could feel him better than she had felt anything in her life – and in the same way, she was anywhere inside and out of him. Part of him as much he was part of her. The heat which invaded her at once so fully was not physical but internal and fulfilling. It followed a rush of satisfaction so very profound than it shaded to pleasure; it was alike the sexual release of orgasm, without the frenzy of physical desire.

She felt all what he felt, all what he thought, and yet there was a boundary, an indefinite, undistinguishable line where he began and she ended…it was an inimitable, incomparable splendour of being. The river widened into a foaming sea – which was no longer cold, but it had turned quiet and silent, on a fashion reminiscent of the focal images of _her_ Occlumency – where Lily floated freely, soothingly.

_Lily? _

The sound of her name came to her within a liquid caress, like a tide of the someone else's thoughts sweetly lapping to her etheric body.

_Merlin, Sev how could you have forgotten to mention that it would feel so bloody good? _

She sensed her voice wrapping around him in a whisper of illusory air - it was amazing - and then his embarrassment rippled on the water surface like a darker, shivery undercurrent.

_I didn't know. My experience with this course of action was purely theoretic._

_Well, I dare to say we are doing it all right so far – _she added, because she couldn't imagine anything so damn perfect could ever be wrong, naïve as it was _– so what now?_

_Now we begin the descent. –_Severus instructed her, any hesitance forgotten _– Follow me, sink into the well of the inner mind, below consciousness. _

So she followed him, allowing him to guide her beneath, giving in to the pressure he exercised on her as if he were the pull of the gravity which pressed her to spiral downwards. Her memories were a wild windstorm cutting through them, hampering their journey, but Severus anchored her to him, stopped her from grabbing a hold of those inconclusive, vacuous images of past so she wouldn't be lost within any of them. His purposefulness seemed to waver only when they began facing mementos and fragments of summers a long time gone. The mirage of the childhood they had shared tempted him, and Lily became aware of how ashamed he was for wanting to reach out and relive those snapshots of merrier days.

_That was the happiest time of my life as well._ – she reassured him eagerly, enough surprised of how disbelieving he was of her confession to endorse an explanation – _I guess it's far simpler to enjoy life when you are a kid and the world looks so full of promise, rather than a gigantic rat-trap waiting to take you in._

She had barely the chance to taste his bemusement to that, before he propelled them both downward until, at last, they reached a dark, dry place where the very essence of them started burning, becoming one with a sort of vivifying, hearty fire.

Surprisingly, Lily didn't feel any fear: she felt safe and whole, even more intensely aware of Severus' presence inside her hidden, incandescent core.

_This is the moment _- he incited softly – _come back to that night. Lean on me and will yourself to relive it. Slowly._

She focused her energies on looking back to that 1981 Halloween and went through again the events as they unfolded from a careful distance. This time around, it was as if that tragedy was happening to someone else and she was only a very attentive spectator. She saw again Harry in her arms and felt his face against her breast as she rocked him, she saw Bellatrix breaking into the room and attacking her, uncaring of maternal pleas, her face more grim but less terrible than it had looked to Lily then, in the throws of panic.

Lily saw herself falling, Harry still in her embrace. Her son didn't cry when she crumpled on the floor. Then her whole landscape of thought was filled by darkness and her numb – and yet at the same time so sharp – perceptions were pure sound. Screams bubbled up from the darkest depths of her conscious: a Crucio pronounced in fury again and again, the desperate wail of a baby, her baby. Then a silence disturbed only by the battle sounds from another room. There was Sirius' voice, yelling for James from far away, a warning to dodge something.

A woman voice – coming from a far minor distance - uttering, almost growling an incantation… it could only be Bellatrix Lestrange, made unrecognizable from that obscure litany. It was like a song, a ferocious lullaby whose cadence resulted threatening.

_Focus on the words, not the rhythm. – _came Severus' soft reproach, squeezing around her to remind her of his presence. She wasn't alone in this.

_I can't_. – she panicked.

_This is your mind, Lily. The only limitations existing there are those you impose on yourself. You remember, you know you do. _

His certainty squelched her doubt and without a clear awareness of how she came to do it, Lily obeyed him. Maybe this was the secret here: set your most rational self aside to let intuition do its bidding. Finally, she could distinguish the words Bellatrix Lestrange was using to weave her last curse:

"An di allaigh an di aigh

An di allaigh an di ne ullah

An di ullah be…"

It was a chant of evocation for power, in Gaelic maybe, murmured in a crescendo of anguish and hatred.

"I greet you, powerful Furies,

Daughters of the night, weavers of vengeance

Bless my fury by the wind which is your breath, by the earth that is your flesh and the fire that is your will and the water that is your living womb

An di allaigh an di aigh

An di allaigh an di ne ullah

An di ullah ne…

Harken the rhyme, break the chain.

Blue God nego

and my will be done! "

_It makes no sense _– Lily reasoned despairingly. – _This is no curse. A joke of my imagination?_

_No – _Severus placated her – _there's meaning in what Bellatrix has chanted. Even if this curse is like nothing I've ever heard of. _

_Then how you do know I'm not fooling myself?_

_If I wasn't able to feel the difference, Lily, I would be a very poor Legilimens. Besides, the Blue God or Divine Self isn't an unfamiliar concept for those who have studied etheric anatomy. _

_Yes – _Lily acquiesced, feeling more in control_ – I think I've read something about it in a book about Shamanism. There are supposed to be three Selves composing human Soul. The Child Self – who is like the Freudian Es, carnal and instinctual – and the Talking Self – rational and organizing like Freudian Ego – and then the God Self … the higher part of our soul, our teardrop of divine essence. But it has little to do with curses and hexes. _

_Still, it's a theoretic model dearer to past wizarding generations than modern ones. It makes me wonder if Bellatrix has used Patrimonial Magic. Old families celebrate their sabbats privately, and every pureblood clan guards jealously its own spell-work to pass down solely to younger members. It's tradition for every initiated member to offer a spell or a curse of his or her creation to increase the group's power. _

It was a little bit scary how much he sounded like a professor each time he tried to illustrate something he knew, but Lily just mentally nodded, remembering even James had tried to explain this custom to her once.

_Then Sirius can't help. His mother had kicked him out a long time before initiating him._

_It makes little difference to us. His brother Regulus has inherited the family house. I might find something useful in his library, hoping the curse isn't anything Bellatrix has learnt from the Rodolphus side of family. Although I suppose Regulus might have some information about that as well, since his cousin had a hand in training him. _

_Why would Regulus help us, anyway? He and Sirius hate each other. _

_He and I kept in touch, let's say. I'm in a position to expect his collaboration. _

_If I ask you to be more specific, will you end the conversation?_

_I'm ending it right now – _Severus brusquely asserted _– we can surface. There's nothing else we can do here._

It displeased Lily a little, leaving that hot, safe core of herself and abandoning herself to her companion's guidance to allow him to pull her up, but surfacing was surprisingly an easier and swifter operation than descending had been. She felt weightless and amazingly clean as Severus drove her through the mists and the currents of her deeper mind to bring her back to a normal state of consciousness. At last, Lily sensed a snap, as if a thread had suddenly broke and the density of her physical body had became oppressively inescapable…there was warmth on her face.

She opened her eyes to find herself there, sitting in front of a fire place as if their little adventure had been no more concrete than a dream. Opening her mouth to talk, she noticed her lips were dry like sandpaper and her throat painfully coarse.

"Drink."

At her side, Severus was handing her a glass of water. She took it and drank avidly: perhaps it had indeed been a dream, because he appeared unfazed, authoritative and perfectly functional. When their eyes met and she gave him back the emptied glass, red spots coloured his high cheekbones and his hand was almost jerking as her fingers grazed it. No, even in her wildest dreams she wouldn't have imagined that feeling of fulfilling, _sensual_ well-being she had experienced when she had surrendered her mind to him.

Everything had been real.

Severus encouraged Lily to let him handle Regulus, promising her that he would share with her any possible new developments. They agreed that Harry would go on with his usual treatment in the meantime, since no benefit could come from suspending it and a more complete understanding of his ailment could derive from a strict and continued surveillance of his episodes of lucidity: it would be been important to study whether they became more frequent over time and in which situations they presented themselves, if they showed a tendency to somewhat _evolve_ becoming longer or shorter or even more articulated.

That night, Lily went to bed feeling overwhelmed in spite of her resolution to not keep a level head. Afterwards, she would convince herself that it was because of this her sleep was troubled.

She was so tired that her eyelids shut as soon her head touched the pillow and she fell asleep almost immediately.

She dreamt of her childhood home, of her mother baking almond cookies with Petunia, of running outside toward the river, her breath coming out in gasps because she was fatiguing to maintain her velocity, her hair falling before eyes as she refused to slow down. She was twelve again and her legs were too short.

Someone was calling to her; a boy about her age had waited for her, his feet in the water of the river, his arm waving to her to draw her attention from a distance. Her heart filled with a wild joy while she accelerated and jumped over the hedge, toward him… but the arms seizing her weren't those of a scrawny, lanky kid.

To spare her fall there was only a man, pale and dressed in black robes, catching her effortlessly and tightening his hold around her waist. In his arms, she was no longer a little girl; the curves she pressed against his warm body were womanly and in her yearning for his touch there was a very adult, desperate hunger. Lily could see his eyes: black and unforgiving, they had the same bruised beauty of a winter morning.

_Sev…_

The morning after, Lily awoke with his name on her lips and the fantasy of his large palm flat on her breast, of his mouth on her face. Her body throbbed with half- forgotten needs as she wrapped her sheets more tightly around herself to stop her hands from wandering , even by accident, in any way.

She curled up in the foetal position and hid her visage in the comforting softness of her pillow, determined to ignore the flush which was already creeping up her neck. Eventually, she pulled herself up on her elbows, surrendering a fit of hysterical giggles.

_Oh Hecate, tell me I have not just had an inconvenient and most inappropriate dream about my ex-Death Eater childhood friend who happens to be the current sort-of Healer for my son. _

It wasn't that she thought he wasn't attractive, because she had always considered his unusual appearance rather compelling – in some gothic and dark way which eluded a precise definition – but… this wasn't a line she had ever crossed. She just didn't think of Severus in _that_ way; the mere idea of him laying his hand on her naked skin for more than a few seconds went far beyond anything she could reasonably expect from a man so little keen on tactile contact. Never mind the prospective of his gaze burning on her figure rather than coolly assessing her: that one was the most simple and forbidden kind of impossibility.

It had to have been that session of shared Legilimency and the weird sensations it had awoken in her, supported by the fact that she hadn't had sex in almost one year. Lily could hardly hold herself accountable for a natural consequence of abstinence and… _psychic _compatibility, could she?

Once, Severus had kissed her only once, by the river, the summer after their friendship had fallen apart and she wasn't sure it had meant more than an explosion of nostalgia, anger and awakening teenage hormones on both sides. Her memory of it had been overwhelmed from the impression left by the poisonous words they had exchanged before and after.

It had nothing to do with her dream, first kiss or not.

Sometimes dreams were meaningless. Nothing too strange with this one in particular.

So Lily put on her best robe and a brilliant smile and resolved to come down moderately late for breakfast, before she had a chance to backtrack. It would be been just silly hiding in her room to delay the inevitable.

Strangely, she wasn't embarrassed to sit beside Severus as usual, and it was very simple drowning her more recent contemplations in inconsequential chatter.

She met his eyes over a bottle of spiced wine with an unspoken challenge he couldn't decrypt and it gave her a shiver of elation, as if she had discovered a funny secret too compromising to reveal.

February seemed to approach with unanticipated swiftness, while Severus' and Lily's lives settled into a vivaciously productive routine they were both extremely comfortable with.

It was probably a time Severus Snape perceived among his most creative: indefinite projects of spells and recipes hadn't flowed so readily from his imagination to his feather since he was sixteen and he was mildly surprised to find how he had missed that old comfort. It was no small victory to observe that his students were finally beginning to treat him with the respect he was due: he no longer had to raise his voice above a conversational tone to attract their attention when he entered a classroom, because a suspicious silence shortly followed his entrance lately. When he had made his decision about the punishment he would inflict on the students who had tried to prank him at Yule, Severus had expected nothing less. It had been rather incautious of them, leaving behind an object dark magic could easily trace back to its owners: the singing shampoo bottle was very useful as a token for a very subtle vengeance spell, which had exploited the Threefold Law to turn back academic misfortune on the young pranksters. Those four seventh-year Gryffindors had found themselves rather careless at every and each lesson – outside Potions, ironically – so Severus was able to single them out very easily, although he pretended the contrary. A few well placed comments during detention and his would-be victims had grown fairly alarmed by the true feelings of their Potions Teacher, who was quite glad of ignoring them completely now. The rumour had spread and blown out of proportion. Other teachers thought it was rubbish, of course, except possibly Albus Dumbledore, who frowned upon it but furthered no comment; Severus felt the satisfaction he had drawn from his little game outlasted the risk of displeasing the headmaster.

Lily, on her side, monitored her son better than any professional nurse. She kept a diary which described with occasionally paranoid precision her son's temporary 'awakenings' – as she had taken to call them – beginning to notice they lasted from fifteen minutes to half an hour, happened more often and lasting more around the noon, or more in general when the sun was high in the sky and the solar energies were most powerful. Even if all that she could have of her son were sparse moments, she had chosen to bask in the joy and the hope they gave her at the present rather than feeling disappointed or worried for the future.

There were also times when she could watch Harry playing with snow or tugging shyly at Severus' leg or his huge green eyes – so much like hers – filling with wonder at the simplest spell her wand could produce. Lily experienced a serenity so complete that the red-haired witch came close to admitting she could get used to that life.

After dinner, every night, she helped Severus to extensively examine the volumes he borrowed from the Grimmauld Place library – they planned on finishing in little more than one month, by taking a few of them each week – and they discussed the passages which seemed concerning their area of interest. So far, few texts of Etheric Anatomy and Supernatural Physiology had helped them to understand better the basic knowledge which had been to Bellatrix Lestrange the backbone of her magical preparation. Regulus Black was apparently been able to point to Severus even some books his cousin had advised him to read when she had attempted to recruit him, but those had proved mostly useless.

The camaraderie developing between Severus and Lily in the meantime had given to their relationship a new balance: they were now able – maybe for the first time – to turn to each other and see not the distance between their worlds but instead their synchrony. She dragged him to see a play of Oscar Wilde in Muggle London for his birthday and he took her to see the 'Rocky Horror Picture Show' for hers. Yet they touched each other with excessive prudence for two people who had known each other for the most of their existences: a hand which wrapped around an elbow and it was reluctantly but not immediately drawn back, shoulders brushed while their faces were looking elsewhere.

Poppy Pomfrey took in the way they subtly oriented around each other during Harry's check-ins with amused trepidation; she saw how Lily would grow slightly more alert when Severus entered a room, how Severus' tense posture would imperceptibly soften whenever a certain redhead spoke to him, how they would subtly adjust their positions in reaction to the other's smallest movements and it made the older witch sad and happy at the same time. It reminded her so much of the way she had felt – a lifetime ago – for her late husband that it had become impossible to stay irritated with the young couple whether they forgot including her in the newest speculation over Harry's case.

Regulus Black wasn't a man easily irritated; he liked thinking that a childhood spent in subservient adoration of Bella's fierce temper and constant resignation of Sirius' sudden swings of mood – honestly, it was no question from whom his older brother had inherited the capacity to pass from protective and understanding to spiteful and angry within a fourteen minutes' span – had taught him a lot about patience and self-restraint.

The latest Yule had been a wonderful exercise of it: all those people at Charity's house, magical and not magical, asking him indiscreet questions he had answered evasively to… all those thunderous looks sent to him from Mr Burbage when his daughter was looking elsewhere, Mrs Burbage' s gentle hospitality, veined with repressed fear and so much more difficult to digest. All those Muggle _neopagans_ who claimed to have their sort of magic… Regulus had refrained from ridiculing them.

Some things instead drove him around the bend with a radical immediacy he was unable to control. Like having a Horcrux under his roof. Albus Dumbledore had insisted that, in wariness of legal binding spells used by Gringotts, the best place to hide the Hufflepuff Cup was Grimmauld Place, so the object was placed inside Walburga Black's old bedroom until the Headmaster could get a new stock of unicorn milk and fairy dust, which were apparently necessary to purify Gryffindor's blade and enable it to exorcize the Horcrux.

In spite of his natural uneasiness at the proximity to the dark artefact, Regulus could have come to accept the idea, if said artefact hadn't been surrounded by a protective circle which prevented anybody but the caster – also known as the Hogwarts Headmaster – to do so much as enter the room.

Although necessary, that precaution so lacking in subtlety afflicted deeply Regulus' pride: it disturbed him as if he had been patronized in his own house. And to add salt to the injury, that blasted cup wouldn't let him sleep decently! He kept having nightmares about Charity, white and still and unbreathing at his feet, her blood splattered all over his Death Eater robes. Every night, it began the same: they were strolling in a beautiful garden and then she would turn and said he had something on his face. She would lean in, grinning in a way he loved, and she would draw back removing a white mask from his face. And then he would kill her, while she still looked up to him with such open trust and a shy question on her lips.

He couldn't stand it.

In a fit of temper, yesterday he had thrown all of her letters in the fireplace and regretted his impulsiveness the moment flames had hungrily embraced the parchment. What kind of man destroyed something he treasured without a blink?

This morning when her owl had landed on his shoulder – far too friendly animal, like her mistress – relief had almost killed him.

_If she had an ounce of sense, she would steer clear of me. If I weren't a remarkably selfish person, I would take that choice from her and stop this madness while I still can do it without hurting her._

But Charity was… healthy for him. She was like the sea breeze for a sailor who had survived a shipwreck, essential for his senses even while it resulted painful.

So he had opened her missive with pathetically eager fingers and read it twice before something else than the recognition of her neat, childlike handwriting got to his brain.

_Oh, Regulus,_

_I'm sorry I was silly to get so angry at you for that comment you made after we visited that Wicca shop. I keep ignoring that we were brought up in completely different environments and it's often difficult for me to accept that you have a right to your scepticism. I still remember your expression when you got on a lift for the first time and I couldn't stop you from going back up and down again and again. _

_I was wrong to call you arrogant and it means so much to me that you asked me to show you how muggle world works. It takes bravery and humility to admit how wrong we have been and I had no right to berate you only because you wouldn't accept my viewpoint without questioning it. I guess sometimes it is only too easy to mistake stoicism for anything else, given our different standings._

_Perhaps next weekend I could take you to try out pizza? I promise I won't sulk if you act embarrassed by my table manners. _

_Write me back!_

_I know you miss me too, you git._

_Love,_

_Charity_

It angered him that she had admitted so plainly she had missed him. It was one thing that he was making himself miserable by tempting himself with her, even knowing he couldn't allow her to get close – he could never decide which of them had more need for protection from the other – but it was unacceptable that she could be as affected by their time together as he was.

Couldn't Charity see he was a greedy, selfish, coward, two-faced, murdering fool without a clear opinion of where he was going with his life?

Regulus Black was someone who was getting interest in exploring Muggle London to confront his conscience but at the same time insisted on diminishing the finest points of Muggle culture because giving it too much consideration would made his crime more terrible. He was dangerous for Charity and dangerous for himself; he certainly didn't deserve her praise. He had nothing but his doubts and his blindness to offer her, yet he desired too much her company to remove himself from it.

Well, Regulus could at least keep considering good taste as his main redeeming quality.

Sighing a bit too deeply, he spread out his parchment and wrote

_Dear Charity,_

_If you were harsh, you were certainly not the only one. I should have remembered I was speaking to a lady and a very smart one at that._

_At least our discussion spurned me to buy some new books. Did you know few authors consider Muggle and magical etheric physiology structured very similarly? It seems the basic difference between us and them is the fact that we are far better energy conduits. I suppose it explains why some Muggles would experience premonition and empathy. Or why Muggle-borns can exist. _

_There's a whole universe out of here I was blind to. I'm more grateful you are taking your time and patience for showing me more than words can express. Whatever pizza is, I trust you wouldn't poison me so I'm looking forward it. _

_Yours,_

_Regulus_

**AUTHOR NOTE: The kiss Lily reminisces about after her dream is a passing reference to another story of mine, the one-shot 'Awakening'. I hope this will make happy all those who have asked for a sequel… and will fill the holes within JKR canon by creating my canon. **

**--**


	12. Chapter 11:Imbolc

**CHAPTER 11: Imbolc **

If there were a specific phase of the year when Severus Snape could not avoid thinking of his late mother, it was Imbolc.

He had hardly any need of closing his eyes for seeing her figure within his mind. He could picture Eileen vividly, standing before the counter of their kitchen, her back to his very younger self as she filled jars with herbs or pounded them energetically with her mortar. He remembered watching her hands with awe while they cut with swift efficiency roots and tubers in regular, tiny pieces… listening how different her voice timbre was whenever she told him of her pride of being a Prince, about how different it used to be when she lived as a real witch, rather than masquerading as a fortune teller and selling herbal remedies like any Muggle wise woman to increase her family's monthly income.

He remembered how often his father would scream at her for filling his house with strong smelling oils and infusions, for sullying his name with her activities… how often she would scream back, sometimes flinging herself to her husband and hitting him until he didn't stop berating her and pushed her aside – always too roughly – and how some other times Eileen would just crawl in a corner and collapse in tears.

Before Lily entered in his life – a blinding sun to Eileen's distant moon – his mother was the centre of his universe. Yet her presence had always been elusive to Severus; her company not entirely participative unless the object of their discussion wasn't Tobias and how disappointed she was with him. Eileen's eyes always been turned inward, even when she was looking at her son.

As a child, Severus hadn't understood her behaviour, but he had adored her – that mysterious creature whose attention he craved, the only being remotely similar to himself in a hostile world full of _Muggles_ who looked upon him in derision or diffidence for his odd clothes and poverty – so it had been easy blaming Tobias for taking his mother from him. It was no longer easy today because he had darker memories of his mother, but he had stopped trying to hate her.

Eileen had, for a reason she had never cared to disclose, loved the Imbolc festivities. Every year, she had arranged to spare the money for going Hogsmeade and allowed him to skip school in order to accompany her. She was always in good mood when February approached and Severus had used that peculiarity for his benefit more than once, but it had ever been at a better use than when he had convinced her to let him bring Lily along. Back then, he had still been trying to impress his new friend.

_1969, 2 February _

_Lily Evans wore a pink dress which clashed with her dark red hair, braided in two plaits, the morning when her parents accompanied her to Spinner's End. She rolled her eyes at Severus as Mr and Mrs Evans exchanged pleasantries and thanks with Eileen Prince, whose frozen smile indicated to her son the extent of her displeasure with that visit. Severus knew what she thought about Muggles, but it was obvious enough that – it didn't matter how much time he spent at Lily's house, or how many times Lily followed him home when his father was out working – these two wouldn't let their daughter go with a virtual stranger. It was lucky enough he had managed to postpone this meeting as long he had and that Tobias was forced from his work at the mill to be an early riser. _

_Yet, seeing his friend struck in formal attire which had probably made Petunia more jealous than usual was well worth bearing his mother's future reproach and Mr Evans wandering glances at the poor conditions of his house. _

"_If you laugh –" Lily warned in a whisper, pulling self-consciously at one of her plaits in an attempt to loosen it "– I swear I'll punch you." _

"_Mmph."_

_It would have been a perfect day and Severus would allow nothing to ruin it. Nothing. _

A knock on his office door distracted him from the pleasant memory and, recalling the task ahead of him, he smoothed his facial features in an insentient mask.

"Come in."

One after the other, two Slytherin Prefects entered the room, their heads held high. As they came to stand before his desk, their body language indicated only a marginal stiffness and Severus Snape took a moment to consider whether this made him more satisfied or irritated with having picked them.

Michael Eventide was Pureblood all through (a descendent of the Zabini line, as his dark colouring and olive skin certified), tall but slender for his age, his androgynous visage dissimulating a dangerous duelling talent and an amazing memory for particularly gruesome curses. With his superficial charisma and rigid etiquette, he had reminded Severus of a younger Lucius from the very first moment.

Rhiannon Musgrave was someone the Potions Master had chosen as an experiment of sorts, because she was the first half-blood sorted in Slytherin coming from an influential family. Her long hair was a blondish red and she was almost as tall and slender as her companion. Her chocolate eyes met his with a defiance which the other Prefect lacked and Severus wondered if she was biting her tongue to not fidget. Or clench her jaw like Michael did.

Enjoying the distress his continued silence was arousing, the Slytherin Head of House turned to the boy, staring him down until he gave in and lowered his eyes.

"In case you are wondering, I'm sparing my breath to allow my Prefects to do their duty and tell me why there's a Slytherin second year in the Hospital Wing."

Michael Eventide shifted his weight from one foot to the other, braving up enough to fixate his gaze on a spot an inch away from Snape' s left ear. Rhiannon Musgrave threw the boy a fleeting sideway glance – like she was valuing how probable was the eventuality he would clean this mess for her – then took a sharp intake of breath and spoke first.

"Some of the older students were exercising. To show off to the first year ones. It has gotten out of hand."

Severus leaned his chin lazily on his right hand as he let his gaze to rake over her face in a clearly less-than-impressed fashion.

"I suppose the fact that Claus Lindermann is Muggle-born –" the Potion Master suggested very slowly, his voice coloured with something meaner than irony and yet not exactly amusement "– means he was encouraged to volunteer playing the guinea pig for his seniors."

Flushing brightly, the girl seemed to unable to find the nerve to answer.

"It was just a Laughing Charm, sir –" the dark-haired teen hurried interjecting "– nobody meant any damage."

"Intentions mean very little when Lindermann has almost been strangled." Severus paused, his expression purposefully darkening. "I was very clear at the term's beginning about this kind of accident."

"It would never have occurred if we had been present, sir."

To her credit, Rhiannon made a conscious attempt to keep her chin up, even if her tones were considerably more subdued. It didn't curb Snape's frigidly furious demeanour in the least; if anything, the man's reply was harsher.

"I'm not interested in excuses, Ms Musgrave. I don't tolerate _any_ disorder within my House, especially since Wizarding England has recently been through a political reassessment which has made Slytherin exposed to slandering rumours. You are a Prefect and your responsibility is keeping your housemates from maiming each other and misusing their wands. Deducting points is merely a side benefit you are risking to lose. Fail again and you will be punished twice as hard as the offending party, because I _will_ consider you directly responsible. Have I explained myself?"

A tense silence followed, the Prefects nodded.

"Have I explained myself?" Severus plied, standing up to tower above the intimidated teens.

"Yes, sir," they chorused.

"You can go, Eventide. Your girlfriend will catch up to you later."

Turning an intriguing shade of greenish blue – wasn't it interesting how often adolescents assumed their love life was a secret from anyone who wasn't their age, even if they were snogging all over the darker half of the castle? – the male Prefect sent a panicked look at the girl beside him, but rushed out of the door before she could notice.

Snape sat back behind his desk after the door had closed.

"If I recall correctly," he said with surprising composure for someone who had so recently looked ready to commit murder, "there are a few lines engraved above the fireplace of your Common Room."

Rhiannon cleared her throat subtly before answering, her arms protectively crossed before her chest. "Yes, sir. They are the Five Slytherin Principles, engraved by Salazar himself."

"Enunciate them."

"Plan with meaning. Prepare with devotion. Proceed with resolution. Pursue with persistence. Smooth over with persuasion. "

No hesitation there, but the girl looked alert, prepared to catch on hidden metaphors or allusions. Snape wouldn't disappoint her expectations.

"As a Prefect, you will be required to live up to them, more than average students."

"Yes –" she acquiesced uncertainly "– sir. I'll do better in future."

Snape continued as if he hadn't heard her. "Your family has a generations-long tradition at Hogwarts, continued even after your grandparents moved to Ireland. These are difficult times… one might even say The War has yet to end within these walls, but it would be a grave mistake if you thought that turning a blind eye to your housemates' less savoury entertainments will keep their nose away from your genealogic tree. Purebloods don't forget so easily."

There was no mistaking the terror on the Rhiannon face now and Severus had to wonder if this had been the expression Lucius had stolen from him so many years ago, in the Common Room.

"Since I've put you in a position of power, I will claim you rise to the challenge rather than camouflaging yourself into the background to protect your… unflattering secret. Play your role."

Apparently, there was nothing else to add, because the Prefect kept staring him with wide eyes without daring a reply. There was no necessity for it, but the girl was usually more impertinent than this.

Maybe, Severus mused without too much regret and with a touch of genuine curiosity, he had exceeded the threatening tones.

"You will accompany the accountable students in my office before dinner. I will know if any one of them is missing. You may go."

"Thank you, sir."

Even if this year hadn't proved particularly cold, Lily could hardly believe the holy day of Candlemas should be considered the beginning of Spring. Snow no longer mantled earth – a fact which did displease her, because she had always been rather partial to sitting by a window and watching candid flakes falling, in spite of the dreadful cold - but these days' weather was marked by steely grey skies, drizzle and slush.

She hadn't thought of Eileen Snape in years but today, when she had risen from her bed and glimpsed the calendar, being reminded it was 1st February, she had found the older woman's face insistently creeping in her thoughts.

Her memory kept drifting to her first Imbolc, that incredible day when magic had stopped being the material constructing dreams and stories and became a concrete truth of life, the mirror of her future. Eileen had taken her and Severus to Hogsmeade and they had spent the morning visiting shops and watching the parade… having lunch at an economic little tavern with turquoise-painted walls which served a holiday's special menu comprehending only dishes cooked with flowers and spring herbs. Petunia had been furious, for both being been excluded from the outing ("Of course I don't want to come, Lily," she had said, "but it was rude not asking me!") and envy for the ridiculous pink dress their mother had forced her sister to wear, but all the sad reminders of Petunia's current estrangement couldn't poison the fresh sense of wonder Lily still felt thinking of the Feast Of Lights.

_1969, 2 February. Hogsmeade._

_Lily Evans felt as if she was the most lucky girl in the world. It didn't matter how many times she had asked Severus to describe the only entirely wizarding village in Britain, how many times she had tried to paint in her mind the picture of a place inhabited only by witches and wizards, her imagination had never came near the enticing reality. _

_Eileen seemed happy enough to air a lecture for everything they saw in that throaty voice of hers, her visage strangely animated, unlike the dull mask Lily had faced every time she had followed Severus home, and the little girl couldn't ever have enough. Trees and shop windows were decorated with candles of the most different colours and there were so many things to see that her best friend was always pulling at her sleeve to show her something he had told her earlier about. Maybe it was a silly thought, but the air itself felt different, like she could almost breathe in the magic charging it._

_They came to a square, whose centre was occupied by the largest bonfire Lily had ever seen. It had to have been lit with a magical fire, because the dancing flames were entwining shades of different blues and violets. They flared so high that it was a spectacle of rare, raw magnificence._

_She and Severus stood before the fire, identical expressions of awe on their visages. _

"_It looks always so… powerful. I never get used to it."_

"_It's the most amazing view in the world."_

_Behind their backs, Eileen placed one of her hands on the shoulder of each of them and went on with another of her explanations: "Every year, at midnight of the Imbolc's Eve, all the women of Hogsmeade meet here and bring the trees or the logs they had decorated for Yule and they burn them to salute the quickening of life within the Great Mother's womb. To welcome the life which stirs under the cold soil, even while our eyes can't yet see. Now, take your place because we are going to sit and wait for the procession to arrive. " _

_Lily turned quickly toward the witch, tampering an impulse to jump up and down in excitement. Nobody had told her anything about that. _

"_Which procession?" _

"_Don't tell her Mum, it will spoil the surprise!" _

"_Sev!" _

"_It's true!"_

_Looking extremely amused by her son's unusual streak of vivacity and a bit smug at knowing something Lily so completely ignored, Eileen witnessed in silence the exchange between the two kids until the red-haired one turned to her again with an endearing puppy-like pout._

"_Mrs Snape?"_

"_Hush, Lily you have heard him. We don't want spoil the enchantment of your first time here."_

_It was really too bad Lily wasn't enough familiar with her friend's mother for insisting her questioning. Luckily having her stomach full and her feet sore rendered their pause more companionable. She and Severus sat close and played a game of inventing a dramatic back-story for the most eye-catching passer-by, while Eileen was completely absorbed by some private inner meditation, kneeled in her spot._

_The crowd slowly gathered around them in a two hours span and then finally, the procession arrived. It was a long, triple queue of young women clad in long white robes and scarlet mantles, mistletoe garlands crowning their heads; the central girls played their drums, singing a very cheerful chant about the coming spring, while the girls on both their sides held in their hands a bowl filled with water they used to sprinkle around, on both people and houses._

_They were led by a more mature woman, dressed completely in red and wearing a crown of copper with a crescent moon front and small opalescent fire-like lights on the side. In her hands there was a weird cross: it consisted of three bundles of wood, interlacing with other three at the centre. The crowd parted easily at their passage, allowing the women to circle the bonfire. _

_Then the white clad ones threw their mantles up high to the sky and Lily saw them vanishing… small scarlet flowers rained everywhere and she opened her hands to let them fell on her palms, but the illusion dissolved at the contact with her warm flesh, leaving behind a tickling sensation on her skin. _

_She grinned widely at Severus, wishing for the words to express exactly how wonderful was all of this and how much she loved him for making her a part of it, but he was grinning just as widely, pointing ahead: "Don't get distracted just now!"_

_The chanting had stopped and the drums were getting louder. _

_The woman dressed in red – which had to be a some sort of Priestess, Lily decided – screamed wildly: "Brid is come, Brid is welcome!"_

_The weird cross was thrown into air and toward the pyre, at midair it self- combusted, becoming a turning wheel of fire._

_The moment the bonfire's flames embraced the wheel, it seemed to inflate as if it was about to explode and Lily, in a fit of complete irrationality, grabbed Severus' hand._

_He leaned toward her and looked at her like she was insane. "Are you scared?" _

"_No!" she cried in indignation, nonetheless tightening her hold around his wrist as if she feared he would have taken it away. _

"_Whatever." Severus shrugged with a smirk and turned again to the show._

_But fire had placated its violent roaring… flames almost grew still and then they parted: a white doe took shape from their heart and stepped out. _

_Lily was speechless in front of the beauty of the slender, sleek animal which trotted around the circle of women who were now singing both their welcome to Brid, Celtic goddess of fire, and calling upon the patronage of the Moon deity Diana._

_The doe was being honoured by the Priestess as sacred totem of Diana; the animal's candid fur glittered in the sun and her eyes were so large and when her elegant neck turned, the expressivity reflected in their silvery depths was almost human, like if she was real, not an illusion of magic. _

_For a moment, Lily almost believed the majestic beast had looked straight at _her,_ but before she could do so much as nudge at Severus, the doe was going away, uncaring of how loud the heart of Muggle-born little future witches beat against their ribcages while they watched her… Lily's enraptured gaze followed the doe as it ran away from the bonfire, toward the parted crowd. _

_It was impossible to accept that someday small miracles like this one would be been ordinary for her. Oh, she couldn't wait to become a real witch!_

Walking along the Hogwarts corridors, Lily was almost knocked over by a fleeing Slytherin girl with coppery curls.

"I'm sorry, Profe–" The girl paused, realizing the adult woman wasn't a teacher. "I'm so sorry!"

And then the girl – who sported a Prefect badge – was gone again, no longer running but not necessarily less fast.

Lily found Severus Snape's office door ajar and she pushed it softly open, her head popping inside as she stayed on the threshold. He was sitting behind his desk, his face void of any emotion as he stared into apparent nothingness.

"Expecting someone?"

Her voice didn't seem to startle him; Severus simply cocked his head in her direction and met her gaze evenly.

"No. Anything specific I can do for you? "

Lily let herself in his office, closing the door behind her. "You can accept being my escort and coming to Hogsmeade with me and Harry after dinner. I want to see as they light the bonfire. It doesn't look smart or fun going alone."

"I'm surprised you want to be staying up until midnight with a child so little."

"He has had a long nap today and then since he never gets sleepy unless I get him tucked in, I might even use his condition as an advantage for once. I have never been to Hogsmeade since he was born and it would be the perfect day to show him. There's at least a chance he has one of his moments of lucidity while we are there, right? It can't hurt try."

"It's not a bad idea."

"Can I consider it like an agreement?"

"Yes."

Lily's natural playfulness had always been one among her personality traits which endeared her most to Severus, mainly because it tended to dispel his aloofness. Another was her tendency – when she was among friends – to speak whatever she had on her mind exactly the way she was thinking it, which could result in an unnecessary thoughtfulness on her part, but it also freed Severus from the paranoia which he employed around anyone else. There were very few reasons he would have turned down the opportunity to spend more time with her.

Without waiting for an invitation, Lily occupied the armchair facing his desk, with a comfortableness impossible for anyone else.

"To say the truth," she confessed, "I didn't expect one had to go as far as Hogsmeade to see the Yule's logs burning. When we attended here, the Yule's trees were kept around until the Imbolc' s Eve. Hagrid would burn them at the sunset on the yard and we will go to watch and help and sing. Now that's only another tradition lost."

The lopsided curve on his mouth became more rigid and something thunderous in his black eyes flashed briefly before being swallowed up by coldness… his turning to the Light hadn't erased his contempt for the way their customs were being bastardized, the deepest mysteries of witchcraft were being discarded, misunderstood and forgotten by contact with external influences. She saw it clearly enough to be put off from it, because it still made her uneasy to state 'the other side' had had few points which could pass for rational.

"When the war ended, Dumbledore thought it would be a great political statement to cancel purely pagan celebrations from the school program. I thought it was crude and unnecessary, but of course the opinion of an Ex-Death Eater held little weight."

"At least students are still allowed to go Hogsmeade after their scheduled lessons."

"A poor compensation for a gross disrespect of our culture."

Lily opened her mouth only to realize she had no comment to mollify his discontent. It was a feeling she could share, but while she no longer idolized the Headmaster like she did in her adolescence, she wasn't completely certain his reasons weren't sound. Besides, there was nothing to be done about it now.

"I've thought often of your mother today."

Her change of subject distracted him, but the surprise he showed ashamed her, for the same reasons she hadn't asked about this before.

"Have you remembered when she used to take us?"

Lily nodded, her pale cheeks flushing a little. "I wanted to apologize for not having asked about her before. I didn't even hear her name pronounced from our fifth year, but when I saw you were living at the Spinner's End alone… "

She didn't want to finish, to say she had considered only then that Eileen could have died. Lily had liked the older witch, even if they hadn't interact often – like Tobias, Eileen had worked hard the most of her days and more often than not, if she came back to home to find Lily with her son, she was tired enough to not be so sociable.

"It was one of those matters where it sounded rude to pry, but I didn't want you to think I didn't care enough to ask."

Severus studied her features with a colourless intensity which tingled lightly over her skin but when he responded her, his answer was smooth and effortless:

"My mother died a few months before our graduation; I had taken a leave from school for fixing the formalities but there wasn't even a real funeral... I thought it would have been a waste since none would attend but me. I avoided mortuaries as well… I didn't think she would have liked having her name on a paper."

What he wanted to say, they both knew, was that Eileen would have hated have her mortuary on a Muggle publication and that Severus had considered counterproductive publishing one on a wizarding paper, given her marital choice.

"She was a discreet woman," Lily amended, not sure about how she was supposed move around this subject. "I'm sorry you lost her so soon. I mean… I know how terrible - "

"She and I were already estranged from the earlier summer," Severus interrupted her with a dismissive firmness which surprised both of them as much as his willingness to continue that conversation. He hadn't breached the matter since _it_ had happened – with anyone – nor had he wanted to but now he had the chance, talking about it with Lily appeared strangely fitting.

"Oh. Because of your… politics?"

She felt rude to ask so directly, but he would express it plainly if he hadn't wanted to talk about it.

"Because of my father," Severus remarked roughly. "I came back from Hogwarts to find him gone and her depressed. I couldn't understand why she would be been so unhappy after all the times we had wished he would disappear in thin air. I suppose I was too young to see hatred can become a valid and intense substitute for love after enough years. I had almost the impression of not having her known at all… I lost my patience once, we argued and never bothered mending the break."

He couldn't summon the courage to reveal how Eileen had blamed _him_, how harsh her accuses were been, how he had done his best to hurt her back as much she had hurt him. He wasn't even sure whether his mother was been right or not. Had Tobias left his family because of the vague threats his son had vented in his face – about what he would be able of doing, once the decree was no longer a problem – or had his father simply grown weary of wasting his hard-worked money on people whom he considered 'something else'?

Had it any importance?

Tobias was just as dead as Eileen, and if Severus had once considered him accountable for his mother's suicide and hysteria, fantasizing of killing him for those and other older crimes, it didn't change the devastation Severus had felt when Regulus had taken from him that satisfaction. Hearts lied you too, and sometimes what you thought you wanted and what you actually wanted were polar opposites.

"It must have made her loss harder to accept," Lily said gently, trying to imagine how she would have felt if Petunia had died.

Severus faced the compassion in her lovely eyes with slightly self-depreciating smile. So many events stretched between now and then than he felt like if he was spreading around pieces of someone's else life. What did he expect from sharing that old story? Maybe he wanted only to see if it was true what they said, about how putting this kind of troubles in stark words diminished their inherent shallowness. Did talking truly take comfort to anyone, in these occasions? He hadn't ever tested it; he hadn't ever really wanted to be comforted.

"Only more difficult to feel. I wasn't even surprised when she killed herself."

A bit bluntly maybe, but he had spoken it finally. It gave him an odd shiver, but it didn't truly set him free of anything.

He could remember the numbness engulfing him after he had received her owl, reading her letter at breakfast table like if everything was ordinary. Her intentions were been declared there, black on white, mocking him because there was no emotion or apology or explanation, only a statement without frills of what had already happened and he was too late to avoid. It wasn't difficult guessing from whom he had inherited his incapacity to forgive.

Lily was cringing, her eyes lucid, her hand covering her mouth. "That's terrible. I –"

Severus watched her face intently as her voice broke, entranced to see the horror he was supposed to have experienced playing on another's face.

"I'm sure she knew how you adored her all the same."

Without plausible warning, her hands reached out to cover the back of his left one, open and laying on the dark wood of his desk. Hers was an emphatic response, impulsive and irrational. He didn't know how react to it, to her soft hands he was unable to shake off because he didn't have any desire to push her away and...

He put his other hand on the top of hers, squeezing it lightly and rubbing his thumb across the vulnerable skin of her wrist. He was never much of a tactile person, so it was shocking that he would feel so affected by so little.

"Sorry that I wasn't there when you needed it the most."

Although she had not known about this – or perhaps exactly because hadn't – she felt guilty he had passed throughout that horrible tragedy without her support. Within a two years span he had lost all what he was used to and the girl who for eight years was been a constant in his life had ignored it, ignored him.

Severus remained silent for few seconds, hypnotized as he was by the manner their fingers were now entwining… their palms settling against each other.

"It wasn't your fault."

"Wasn't it? It was downright arrogant of me, saying you had chosen your path. We were just fifteen year old and you deserved better than that from me."

"You weren't so mistaken in the end. I could have proved you wrong with facts rather words, but I didn't want to give my success with Dark Arts up. They made me feel like I was whole and normal… I needed that feeling. To be sincere, I was relieved to have you sealing the choice in my stead."

It was odd she had never analyzed too closely the root of his interest in Dark Arts, but maybe then she had been too young and idealist to perceive the darker nuances of reality. All that Severus had hoped for, in his way, by coming to Hogwarts, was feeling normal… if in Light Magic his anger and isolation were been a weakness, in Dark Arts they had to have been a source of power. Now, it was almost natural to understand how they could have drawn him. Did he miss them nowadays? Or had their allure faded when he had paid its price?

"I'm glad you found your way back to Light and I'm… grateful for your friendship. Finding you again is been like homecoming."

She promised to herself would be been a better friend this time around.

"Idem," he muttered, pleased but not quite smiling, unable to bring himself to figure how they had ended up having that discussion.

Maybe the famed comforting power of 'talking' and 'trusting' when you were hurt had little to do with relieving yourself of invisible weights, but it was rather about realizing you had someone who cared for your loss and made hers.

Because Lily _cared _– this wasn't pity – and the impossibility of denying or misunderstand this notion filled Severus with a sweetness he wouldn't forget. Ever.

So Severus and Lily brought Harry to Hogsmeade for his first Feast of Lights, but rather going after dinner they decided on visiting that first little tavern where Eileen had taken them years ago. Lily was surprised to learn the place was still owned by the same pixie-like old lady and that the decorations were just as beautiful as in her childhood memory: white jasmine-scented candles were hung anywhere and the centre of each table was decorated with a dish of magical snow, evergreens and brown little candles. The tavern was also just as little and poor as it was twenty years ago, but they barely noticed that.

At midnight, the three of them were at the square, surrounded by giddy witches and wizards who linked their arms and danced back to back – according the ancient ways – by the tribal rhythm of drums, bagpipes and drums; while they were waiting as the bonfire was lit, Lily felt once and again like that little girl who had been recently introduced to a fairy tale realm: an otherworldly creature who had found her road to home.

"I had taken for granted all of this," she confessed to Severus as he offered a cup of hot lavender tea.

"I can't imagine why," he said to her sardonically and she was touched by carefulness he was employing while he volunteered to get Harry to drink. His hands were amazingly gentle in forcing her son's chin up and pressing the cup against the Harry's closed mouth until her little boy opened it and sipped the warming beverage, his patience effortless as he calibrated each pause to give Harry his time to gulping down each sip.

Then finally, all the mothers and matriarchs resident in Hogsmeade gathered around the large pyre prepared and they pointed their wands toward the massed woods and hogs.

The bonfire took life in one spectacular breath.

"To Imbolc," some men toasted, their booming voices rising above the explosion of hands clapping and drums beating heavier.

"Lily," Severus called her and she saw his gaze drifting down, motioning her to do the same, to see Harry – in her lap – was following the movement around him in palpable interest.

Feeling happier than she would have ever imagined she would be able of, because her child could _truly_ participate in the Feast, Lily kissed Harry's cheek and silently thanked the gods who were watching over them.

She appeared radiant to Severus as she showed to Harry how to clap along everyone else. In moments like this one it was difficult to admit he _liked_ watching Lily with her brat.

Not just because it was Lily and watching her was always a source of pleasure, but because in these situations he could appreciate the difference between the Eileen's love and hers: Lily loved her son with reckless abandon, even if it had turned painful to her. Every time he saw her with Harry – even if it was James Potter's spawn she was coddling – it almost invited him to believe there might be more to this world than the dark and violent side he had experienced firsthand.

For that rare taste of faith, Severus loved her more each time


	13. Chapter 12: Transitions

**CHAPTER 12: Transitions**

"_Okay"- Charity commanded, her tone leaving no room for discussion- "this is quite enough. You must stop, Regulus"_

"_This is the best thing I've ever eaten!"_

_With his greyish blue eyes wide and twinkling, his mouth grinning, at that moment Regulus Black looked at least ten years younger: it was almost natural that reprimanding him made Charity feel so much like his mum. Well, from what she had heard not quite like *his* mum, but still it wasn't a good feeling to get around someone she considered a romantic interest. _

"_This is your second pizza, Regulus! If you eat a third one, you will be sick! "_

_Regulus glanced down regretfully at the last three slices of his four-cheese pizza and mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like 'it would be so worth it, ' but then he livened up soon enough._

"_Do you think I could bring one to Kreacher? I bet he might learn how it's done "_

_Charity sighed in disbelief: "Good idea" _

_Looking around the pizzeria for a waiter, Regulus noticed many eyes were on him " Why are they staring me? Have I exaggerated that much? "_

"_That isn't for your eating habits "_

"_Oh. I've mismatched my clothes again?"_

_Appraisingly, Charity lingered on his pale grey businessman suit and azure tie, the way his jacket fitted him._

"_No, you look very elegant" _

_She wished to own either the right or the gall to say he looked dashing, wearing colours that made his eyes stand out. _

_It was one of those disturbing moments when looking at him for too long gave her a languid sort of dizziness. _

_More oblivious than usual to her weakness, Regulus frowned._

"_I must be doing something wrong, if they are watching."_

"_They are probably wondering what you are doing with me"_

"_Eating pizza?"_

_Charity's lips pursued in a cocky grin "What I meant is that we are a bit of an unbalanced pair. Women notice you are more… eye- catching than me. " _

_Regulus had an understandable difficulty in believing that his bubbly, chatty, optimistic friend had really such a low opinion of herself, and to judge from the excessive rising of his eyebrows, he wasn't bothering to hide it. _

"_If I could give up my appearance for your strength, I would do it without hesitation. Is that consoling? "_

_Naturally, he was completely sidestepping her clumsy attempt to flirt with him. Deliberately._

_But she wasn't giving up so easily. "Only if that's not your way of saying I'm not pretty "_

_Regulus looked away swiftly and Charity felt a soft kind of pain clutching her chest and slowly stifling her. She should have kept her mouth shut, but Gods, all this never- ending tip-toeing around the possibility of a romance between them, without ever being clear, was beginning to drive her mad! Maybe her timing was wrong, but she could not have imagined the mutuality of their attraction to each other, could she? _

_But then Regulus's gaze was on her again and there was steeliness in it that spoke of determination._

"_You are so much more than pretty. You are… beautiful, in that cute way nothing in this world compares to. But the fact I want you means very little when I don't know if whatever you are seeing in me is there or not." _

"_I don't get you. But to me, what you've just told me means a lot. "_

_Regulus didn't interpret her words as the encouragement they were meant to be. _

"_Look...I was used to certain standards, okay? For my whole life, all that I knew was what I would become: a good son, a capable wizard, a worthy heir to my pureblood line, who would defend our traditions from outsider aggressions."_

_Charity frowned, still not understanding his point, but Regulus raised his hand to discourage her interference before she could interrupt him. _

"_Now I 'm nothing of what I imagined I would be at this age since I was a child. I've betrayed my mother, by becoming disillusioned with all that she has taught me, yet she died forgiving me because I was all that she had left. I don't feel like a proper wizard any more than I did in my first year at Hogwarts, because until not so long ago, half of my body was magically and physically impaired. All that I used to believe in tastes fake and I don't know what I'm supposed to be now that I can't hide behind those roles. The only truth I'm certain about is that human beings don't need magic to do horrible things to each other. Muggles or wizards, we are both able and available to murder, to torture and to rape. Yet I can't just hide inside Grimmauld Place forever and let life go on without me, only because I think the world isn't worthy of saving. "_

_There was something about the smooth manner in which he managed to manipulate sentences and metaphors to turn a discussion to his advantage that had always charmed her, but this time his eloquence chilled Charity for the desperation it painted. He was trying to tell her he loved her trusting nature enough to preserve it and he couldn't see any other way to do it than to keep her at a safe distance from his bitterness. _

_But she was less naïve than Regulus judged her to be, even if she had been exposed to a far lesser degree of violence._

"_I realize today that it is not easy living in our world and still loving it, but there are no maps or charts to draw to fix it and make it safe. Regulus, the only thing you can do is allow yourself to live. We can deal with the rest together. With small steps. "_

But Regulus was shaking his head, stubbornly refusing to look at her.

" Let's get out of here"

He said, but when they were ready to go and he was helping her put on her coat, his hand ended up cupping her cheek.

Regulus kissed her as if she was the water he was drowning into, yet in the way his mouth caressed hers there was a such adoration that his kiss felt almost fragile, like she would be able to pull away with the smallest effort.

_Charity shook herself out of her daydreaming at the sight of Lily Evans' petite figure at the other end of the hallway. There was a difference between unhealthily obsessing over your first kiss with your current boyfriend and basking in the joy of a new relationship, but right now she couldn't draw the line._

_The Muggle Studies teacher hurried to reach the older woman. Lily had been a huge help to her in organizing her lessons schedules these past months, helping her see how she was to introduce this or that facet of Muggle culture to her students, but lately they hadn't had many chances to talk. Charity felt guilty for that- she had always laughed about that kind of girl who falls in love and forgets anything else to walk among her boyfriend-shaped clouds. She didn't expect to become one of them. _

"Hey, Lily!"

"Charity, I was beginning to think you had moved out of the castle!"

"Sorry, I've been awfully distracted lately"

"And occupied, your aunt tells me"

Charity groaned in mock pain. "Aunt Poppy is too talkative sometimes."

Especially if it involved her only niece's love life. Being close with your relatives could become rather uncomfortable if they were a _bit_ pushy and hadn't the sense to respect the fact that there were limits to what a girl would accept advice about.

"Being over overprotective is part of her charm, but she is truly content that you are so happy"

Oh, Charity was just imagining what that would entail: months and months of her aunt complaining all over the castle about how loving her niece was and how worried she was about the heartbreak the Black boy would cause her.

"Hm, I would be happier if she could trust my judgment enough to not be so worried about whom I am happy with."

"I think it is an unspoken rule of family"- Lily mused, her mind on her parents and how disturbing it still felt to accept she wouldn't see them again – "they question our dating choices more than we do. I remember when I brought James home to introduce him to my parents. He panicked and begun babbling on about his magic curriculum to impress them. I never had the courage to tell him it had quite the opposite effect on my dad. He thought James was the most self-centred person on the planet. "

To recall it now, it was a very funny memory. During that first dinner James had- in the throes of his embarrassed excitement- proudly revealed all about the Marauders' secret lives as illegal animagi and how his animal form resembled his patronus.

Her mother had been absolutely eager to adopt by him the soiree's end but Mr Evans had just frowned over his wife's encouraging enthusiasm.

_Lily_- he had broken in tactfully- are you _sure you want to date a boy whose patronus is basically a reflection of himself? From how you described the evocation of a patronus_, _this looks to me like a sign of a certain … egocentrism. How can the essence of his happiness be in himself? _

Of course Lily had fretted to justify James, describing how important his friends were to him and how the stag represented just that, but neither motivation had seemed to put off her father from his first assumption. Good old dad, so rational and yet so intrigued by magic and so eager to listen to what she had learnt at each summer's beginning. How she missed him!

"At least James had a chance to get your dad to change his mind"

"He did. "

Lily confirmed. What would her parents think about her present situation if they were alive? Maybe Lily would go live with them and her father would want a word with her husband about how his daughter was to be treated, her mother would assure her it wasn't anybody's fault if some marriages don't work... maybe Petunia would still speak to her. Maybe her parents would have been happy to know she and Severus had given their friendship a second chance at last. Severus' abrupt disappearance from her life had confused them, because she was too ashamed to confess which mysterious 'differences of opinion' had brought her to sever all the ties to a boy she knew for so long.

_Oh, sweetie_ –her mother had told her in exasperation -_What's new? You and Severus have had 'differences' since you met! You will get around them until the day you both will notice you are too old or too smart for these silly scenes._

"What about _your _love life, for a change? "

Lily rolled her eyes at Charity's change of subject. It was almost pathetic she hadn't dated anyone since James, even more so because she hadn't truly dated anyone _except_ James. One of her reasons to dislike the Marauders in her early Hogwarts years had been James' insistence on emphasizing in front of the whole school that she was forbidden territory. Then during their seventh year, a Death Eaters' attack on Diagon Alley had both orphaned and changed him, so she had given him a chance to surprise her. The rest was history.

She simply hadn't had time to date others. She probably wouldn't have known how to start if she had intended to.

"Which love life? I'm not exactly having great opportunities for interesting meetings. "

It wasn't one of her priorities, either, but it made her feel so old to admit it, even to herself, that she had no vivid wish to discuss the matter further.

"So you didn't go to Hogsmeade with Snape for Imbolc? "

"Severus and I are friends."

Lily snapped without warning. It annoyed her to sound so defensive about it, but she had no intention of spending more time defending her friendship with Severus than to truly live it. She had already gone down that path once and it had taken her nowhere pleasant.

Too bad Charity had interpreted her discomfort in quite another way.

"Then you are friends who spend lots of time together"- the younger woman insinuated- "even if Harry makes the situation a bit complicated, you are both adults. There's nothing wrong with- "

"We aren't like that"- Lily vehemently remarked - even if he wasn't treating my son, we have been friends since we were children. Before Hogwarts, even. It would be too …er, weird."

The two women had now stopped in the middle of the empty hallway, and Charity looked completely baffled by the most recent turn of the conversation.

"You knew him before Hogwarts?"

"Yes?"

"I had no idea. Sorry" – suddenly Charity took an expression of extreme amusement- "I know Regulus thinks highly of him, but Severus Snape has always intimidated me a little. It must be that silent, composed air of his… I always make bad impressions around serious people. I can barely picture him as a child. "

"In some aspects I would say he's less tense today than he was when we were eight."

"Hm, if he had 1/10 of the patience he has now, he must have been the calmest little boy ever… "

"Trust me, he was surely the most disciplined, pragmatic and responsible kid you could imagine. But calm? Not him. Then as today, he was anything but patient. He is just really good at simulating the calm he lacks."

He had also been bull-headed, possessive, strongly opinionated, pessimistic and introverted. Oddly, it was those traits that had drawn her interest first and foremost. At least until the Hat sorted her into Gryffindor and him into Slytherin, slowly changing their perceptions of the world and of each other' s shortcomings; later, it was like there were two Lilys - the Sev 's Lily and the Gryffindor' s Lily- and they couldn't coexist. They had became too intransigent with each other: she had wanted him to see things her way and he had wanted her to see them his.

Thanking Gods, adolescence was a passing phase. You could miss it, but you wouldn't relive it if they paid you for the sacrifice.


End file.
